It’s Wednesday—Let’s Help to Restore the Lost

Happy Wednesday! Is your week going well? And have you remembered to thank Jesus for the blessings He’s poured out for you? 

Last night my sister took me to the Parkville Women’s Clinic Banquet. The PWC is a pregnancy crisis center that offers a wide variety of services to mothers and fathers including testing, ultrasounds, parenting classes, and lots of follow-up assistance. In a world of “quick fixes” they are working diligently to help wounded and hurting people make the right choices. 

During Jesus’ time in Galilee, people lived together in one big place called “my father’s house.” There were lots of rooms built around a common courtyard—Beth Ab in Hebrew. (Remember when Jesus said “In my Father’s house there are many rooms. I go to prepare a place for you?”) Resources were pooled for the common good of the whole. And in doing so, it allowed that community to help those who needed it—those who were in trouble or had been marginalized or were in times of brokenness. That was and is God’s plan. To redeem those who are lost or who are outside the fold. To restore people to Him and to His family, to a community of faith. 

In the book of Acts when Paul made the journey to Philipi, it was a miniature Rome, the culture was Hellenistic which basically everyone for him or herself. Very different they where they had come from. There, the worldview was all about competing for power and pleasure and leisure, about putting your needs and desires above everything else. Sound familiar? Pretty quickly he and Silas end up beaten and in jail. 

“But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭10:14-17‬ ‭MSG‬‬

If the culture of the Christian people in Parkville had been like the people in Philipi, the Women’s Clinic wouldn’t exist today and how many babies would not have been born and how many families not have been saved? But with people pulling together, caring about the unborn, caring about fractured families, and those young people trying to figure out if they could be a family, they have taken care of nearly 600 pregnant women who came to them in crisis just this year. Praying with them and sharing the love of our Savior with them. That’s what we who live in our Fathers house do! Come together to help restore people to the family—to the faith. 

Today, pray with me that we would always pull together when ever we are given an opportunity with other believers so that the message of Chist can go forward. So that people can be redeemed. After all, at one time someone did that for us. 

Love you dear one,

Pam

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