Day 179: Worthless Spiritual Words

1 Corinthians 2; 1 Kings 15:1-32; Joel 2:12-23

When Paul when to preach to the Corinthians, he was shaking in his sandals! The great Paul himself, nervous and weak about bringing Jesus to a group of people. That makes me feel better about my fears about taking the gospel to people and places. Then Paul talks about his strategy: Just simply talk about Jesus. That was his big master plan. He said that he didn't want to use fancy words or lofty wisdom, because that would make people believe in human wisdom, not the power of God. So he said he simply talked about who Jesus was and let God do the rest. I'm very thankful that Paul would set this kind of example; now I know that I don't have to have to know everything in order to tell people about Jesus. I don't have to come up with some fancy prayer or story, use eloquent or especially spiritual sounding language; the power of God speaks for itself.

Asa in 1 Kings almost completely obeys The Lord. He gets rid of the temple prostitutes and destroys the idols. That is awesome and fabulous, good for Asa. Except, he allows some local shrines to remain. He takes care of part of the problem, but leaves quite a bit of the problem untouched. When we are trying to follow Jesus, we don't need to just mask or supress our sin, or even remove most of it; we need to completely destroy it. Asa is a good example of how we can be doing the right thing, but not quite finish the job or compromise for one reason or another. God's people need to stand up for what is right, defend that, and not accept anything that is not pleasing to God.

In Joel, it is talking about the people turning back to God. God says: "It isn't too late. You can still return to me with all your heart. Start crying and mourning! Go without eating. Don't rip your clothes to show your sorrow. Instead, turn back to me with broken hearts." Even after all these people had done to reject and destroy what God had given them, God says that there is still time to repent. As long as someone has breath in their lungs, they can turn to The Lord. Then he goes on to tell them not to tear their clothes, as was the custom of this time to show sorrow. He tells them not to do this because God doesn't want a show, he wants real, broken, and contrite hearts. Anyone can fall to their knees and tear their clothes, looking very repentant, but what really determines a person's devotion to fixing their life is the surrender of their heart.