Stories...

We begin reading stories to children when they are very young, even before they can understand what we are reading. We tell stories in the form of jokes, we describe our life experiences to others in the form of stories. Some folks even make up stories to be impressive.
Jesus used stories to help His listeners (us included) to see deep truths. The biblical term would be parable. These parables helped the spiritually weak to understand. 
In Luke 10:25-37, Jesus uses a story to teach a "religious" man about mercy towards neighbors. 
Mercy, a game that we played in Jr High. Interlocked fingers, trying to overpower the other and bend their fingers backwards, inflicting pain until they cried "MERCY!". In that context, mercy meant to stop inflicting pain. 
Just maybe, helping our neighbors, is indeed, to stop the pain. 
The bottom line is...
Love the Lord with everything, love your neighbor as yourself.

Lent, Leadership, Spiritual gifts

For Lent, I will give up "not blogging". I have to constantly remind my self that it's not about me. My purpose for blogging is to share how God is working and has worked in my life. To share the things that He's telling me.

Leadership. According to Romans 12:8, it is a spiritual gift. Spiritual gift. Wait, what the heck does "spiritual gift" mean? I believe it means that God has given each of His followers a natural propensity to do certain things, and to do them well. From there, we decide to cultivate those gifts and use them. Sometimes we use them for God's purposes and sometimes, not. I think of the gift of evangelism and how Adolph Hitler had certainly been given that gift and used it to serve the purposes of Satan rather than God. We have that choice. Hitler obviously chose the wrong focus of his gifts.

Leadership. In order to be a leader, that requires followers. I inventory my own life and see that there are those whom I lead. It makes me a little nervous as I contemplate what I'm leading them to. The Apostle Paul had the gift of leadership. He told the Corinthian church, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

My self-inventory includes asking: Can I say that? Am I leading people to Christ?

That's my desire. To lead. To lead people to a relationship with the eternal Savior. Jesus, the ONLY way to God.

The bottom line is:

If I'm not leading people to Jesus, my life is a failure.