A Fruitful Restoration

The Christian life is a long journey and sometimes God uses us in spite of ourselves.

Suman became a disciple 21 years ago in New Delhi, India. Soon after that, her younger sister Renu was baptised. Suman was very bold in her evangelism. At the time she was a computer instructor. She reached out to one of the students at the computer center, Mukund, and he too became a disciple.

Lo and behold, Mukund went on to marry Renu, Suman’s younger sister. As the years went by Suman kept reaching out and helping others to know God. She was always very giving, selfless, and committed.

Suman and Renu’s family did not understand their engagement towards Christ. The two sisters underwent a lot of opposition but they stood strong.

Suman would bring her young niece to church with her. Neha thus grew up “in the church”. Eventually when she reached adulthood she too decided to follow Christ.

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, Suman went through some difficult times in her relationships in the church. She got hurt, did not open up about it, did not seek enough help, and she decided to leave the fellowship. She knew, however, what the truth was, so she kept attending church for the next 15 years, never wanting to be restored.

All this while Suman saw God work many miracles in her family. Mukund and Renu had two beautiful children, Suman’s nice Neha got married to a wonderful young man in the church, and many blessings came their way.

As Mukund and Renu’s first child, Nitin, became a teenager he decided to start studying the Bible. This was a turning point for Suman. She saw this young man make a decision for Christ and at his baptism she finally decided to give her heart back to Christ. It was a real joy to see Suman restored to the fellowship 21 years after she first got baptised. She is back in the fray, reaching out, helping, serving, and generally being a great disciple of Christ!

First Things First

I've always been a little amused at Jesus instruction in Matthew 6:33, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness...."

Priority number one?  Two things!  #1, his kingdom; #1, his righteousness. How does that work?  I don't think it was that he couldn't decide between the two.  I think it's that you can't have one without the other.

This kingdom that he wants us to place at the top of our priority list--in the context of this scripture, contrasts a kingdom-priority with life's urgent demands that we are tempted to make our priorty: food, shelter and clothing.  Jesus is telling us that his kindom (the church on earth and heaven in the afterlife) needs to be our primary concern and not to waste our energy on worry about accumulating life necessities.  Certainly he wants us to be responsible in providing for our families, but he doesn't want it to rob our souls of the truly important thing--living faithfully in a community of believers with a focus on making it to heaven.  He wants us to have a spiritual perspective on our values.

The second #1 is a pursuit of God's righteousness.  Jesus wants us to be ever-mindful of our character development.  He wants to imitate the righteousness of God and to grow to be more like him everyday.  Jesus lived out that righteousness in his time here on earth and had his story recorded so we could know what perfect righteousness in human flesh looks like. 

While the righteousness of God is unsearchable, we can know it includes obedience to his commands, an embodiment of the fruits of the Spirit and, above all, love.  What a worthy and challenging pursuit Jesus laid out  for our lives!  It keeps us facing in the right direction, growing in our spirituality, emphasizing what really matters in life. 

If we really let these two things be our first priority, we'll never get bored, never run out of things to strive for, and never be limited by our circumstances.  First things first!