Would We Be Missed
It is interesting to me how when God wants to get my attention, I am like the prophet who saw all of the natural disasters but found that God spoke to him in the “still small voice”.
I feel that Jesus has been speaking to me a lot lately about my church and my personal outreach. I have read in my devotions, talked to fellow church members and read several articles in apostolic publications that have all posed the same question:
If my church leaves Kilgore, Texas, will we be missed? Will there be a hole in our community due to our loss? Will there be a lack of the Holy Ghost being poured out where we are if we weren’t here?
There is a principle we should adopt into our lives that I learned while in school that we should allow to motivate us in our goal of personal evangelism. It is known as the salt covenant and it finds its basis at the end of the 18th chapter of the book of Genesis.
“Ye are the salt of the earth…” These familiar words spoken by our Lord attach the New Testament teaching with its Old Testament Counterpart found in Genesis 18. Abraham knew what it was to be the salt of the earth. He knew that without salt that the world as he knew it would be in peril of destruction.
Here’s Genesis 18- Jordan’s Paraphrase Edition. God came to Abraham and said, “I’ve heard the cry of how wicked Sodom and Gomorrah are, and I’ve come to destroy it.” Abraham quickly responded, “That’s not your nature. If there were fifty people of righteousness in the city, would you destroy it?” “No, not for fifty.”
Thus the haggling between Jehovah God and Abraham began.
“How about forty-five?” “No not for forty-five will I destroy it.” “What about say forty?” “No, not for forty” “How about thirty….”
And on and on it went until the final verdict was ten. If there were ten righteous people in the entire population of Sodom, God said He would spare it.
Ten people are not a lot when faced with even a small population the size of my small town here in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Just over 11,000 people. Like I said, not much.
The only family Abraham had in Sodom was Lot. It was Lot, his wife, his daughters (mentioned plural, so at least two), Sons (at least two), daughter-in-laws (at least two), and son-in-laws (at least two). That gives a total of ten. If Lots family had been righteous and living as God commanded, being the salt of the earth, God would have pardoned Sodom. This wasn’t to be, as we find out in a later chapter of Genesis.
Sodom missed out having a righteous family in its midst. This leads to the personal question that we all must ask ourselves, would we be missed?
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