Jan 31

We cannot give God's life to others without personal involvement. That highest level of love, 7th - chapter - of - John love, will not flow out from us and into others unless we become personally and intimately involved with those others. We must leave our clean, antiseptic house of self, where God has come to be with us, and go out into the stench and dirt of this world and minister there. We must intermingle our lives with the lives of others: flesh touching flesh -- just as Jesus did and just as Elisha had to do in the Scripture for today, before life from God flowed out from him into the dead body of a child.

In that story, which has applications to the lessons we learn from Simon's supper party for Jesus, we see that Elisha first sent out someone else to do his job, his servant Gehazi--but nothing happened as a result:

"Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy's face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, 'The boy has not awakened'" (2 Kings 4:31).

Why should we be surprised when we see no response from the world to our wooden services, whether they be church services or serving others personally? We give money to let other people be our servants and do our job of witnessing to the world, while all the while God is waiting for us to get personally involved with people for whom he died.

How personal does he expect us to be before he honors himself through us with miracles of even raising people from the dead, whether spiritually, literally, or both?

"Then he (Elisha) got on the bed and lay upon the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands" (v. 34).

Wow! What intimate, personal contact that is, to lie on a corpse in that manner.How many spiritually dead people have you come into that close contact with, in order that they also may come to spiritual life in Jesus as you have come?

Scripture for today: 2 Kings 4:8-37
Thought for today: No life will come to the spiritually dead through me unless I am willing to come into close, personal contact with them, the way Jesus has with me.
Prayer for today: Make me willing, Lord, to be as close to others I may not want to be around, as Elisha was to that dead body.

JAN 31