Your Daily Devotional for April 12, 2006

April 12, 2006

 

A Constraining Ministry

by Dr. Paul Chappell

 

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:”

 

2 Corinthians 5:14

 

It’s obvious when you survey the life of the Apostle Paul that there are certain things he just could not quite “get over.” One of those things was that he had been saved by the grace of God. Another was the priority of the ministry…of sharing the truth of Christ with other men and women throughout the known world.

 

As we refer back to our text verse, he says that the love of Christ constrained him, or we might say compelled him to press on for the Lord Jesus Christ when it came to ministering to the needs of people. Paul had a purpose because of salvation!

 

I once heard a story about a little elementary school girl who tried to act important by having important things in her purse. At recess, all the other little girls would compare the things they had in their purses, yet she just didn’t seem to have the types of things they had. In fact, other than some Kleenex and papers she’d gathered from the house, she really had nothing to boast of to her schoolmates. One day after school, she decided she would get some really important items to place in her purse. As she was rummaging through her mother’s desk at home, she found a particularly important document, which had her name on it…her birth certificate. She quickly grabbed the document, folded it up, and placed it in her purse thinking she would really have something to impress her friends with tomorrow at recess. As she prepared to remove her birth certificate from her purse to show her friends, a sudden gust of wind blew it from her hands. She began chasing it all around the schoolyard trying desperately to catch it.

 

Unable to catch it, she resigned herself to failure and began to weep. A nearby janitor noticed her distress, came over to her and asked, “What’s the matter child?” Choking back the tears, she looked up and replied, “I lost my excuse for being born.”

 

Like that young girl, I fear many Christians have also lost their excuse for being “born again.” They’ve somehow forgotten the reason God saved them. Paul never forgot the reason he was born again. He said the love of Christ constrained him and gave him a reason for living…the ministry of reconciliation.

 

May we, like the Apostle Paul, never forget the reason God saved us. He wants you and me to be partners with Him in the ministry of reconciling a lost and dying world to Himself, and His grace should constrain each of us to be busy doing just that. 

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