Sunday, May 16, 2021

GOD DOESN'T LOOK AT THE MASSES; HE LOOKS AT EACH

GOD DOESN’T LOOK AT THE MASSES; HE LOOKS AT EACH

I send my preach letters to a small group of people who like to get the printed version via snail mail. But at the end of 2020, I lost contact with a doctor friend who’s been getting them since 2012. I felt bad and thought maybe she moved away. I continued to send them to her, but they got returned, so eventually I gave up. Then this week, she called. She was concerned about Jane and me because she was missing my preach letters, and she didn’t know if something happened to us during the covid thing.

 

As it turned out, she was at the same work address, but someone was not delivering my letters, but putting them in return mail instead! We had tried to find her but never did. So to reconnect with her really made me so happy. I thought of the man in Jesus’ parable who went to find his one lost sheep. I know it’s not the same thing exactly, but I felt the same joy as the man did.

 

How think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray” (Matt. 18:12-13).

 

For God, it’s never been about the numbers or the masses of people, but rather the quality of character. We are all, as individuals, like that one sheep that Jesus comes to find.

 

Throughout the Bible, God has never required the mass of followers to do His work, but the few who will call out to Him and do His will. When Gideon went after the Midianites, God reduced Gideon’s troops from 10,000 to only 300.

 

“And the Lord said unto Gideon, ‘By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place’” (Judg. 7: 7).

 

God doesn’t need a majority to believe in His miracles, to believe in His deliverance, or His kindness to a nation. Throughout history, our God has responded to the prayer and cry of single individuals like you and me. Look at Abraham, Hagar, Esther, Ruth, Job, Jonah, Zacchaeus, the woman with the issue of blood, and so many more. God isn’t looking for the multitudes. He is focused on looking at you and me individually. He will fix and restore all our losses.

 

“And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten. . . . And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed” (Joel 2:25-26).

 

Love, Carolyn

 

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