Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Encouragement

This is to encourage all my peoples who have been let down, hurt, misused, ill treated, looked down upon and abused in every sense of the word physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
How is it that one day we are loved and embraced, treated with utmost respect and the next day we are treated like outcasts?

How is it that one day we mean the world to people; we are placed on a mantle for all to see and the next day we are the doormats at the backdoor?

That’s life, the Bible says the Armour of Flesh will fail (Psalm 146:3), in other words don’t put your full love, hope, expectation, reward, salvation, promotion etc. in man.

Why? Because men are fickle. Not everyone is what we perceive them to be, some people have issues within themselves and they don’t even know it.

Take for example a healthy person who eats right, exercises etc. but they get a heart attack. Why is that? They were doing everything right and on the outside everything looked great, but on the inside was where the problem was.

It’s always been the problem “The Heart”. The Bible says the heart is deceitfully wicked (Jer 17:9), so in other words we may be the best Christian possible but a big heart attack is on the way.

How do we overcome it? By doing what the scripture says, “Create in me a clean heart O God and renew the right spirit within me”. (Psalm 51:10)

We may be doing everything right to survive as a good Christian but we can't see what’s inside of us until it happens or until God reveals it to us and removes it.

This explains why people can treat us the way they do. They see us as insignificant and meaningless because we may not have anything to offer them “or so they perceive”.

A shepherd boy had nothing to offer King Saul but his allegiance and undaunted faith in God with 5 pebbles. This meaningless boy saved a nation from impending slavery, destruction and humiliation. What thanks did he get? His life was threatened because he was too good of a helper. His one mistake was that he was too good at serving his King.

So his King became jealous and wanted to kill him. David was forced to live in the wilderness to save his life; isn’t that like us sometimes? We mean no harm, we bring nothing but our genuineness to help, restore, love, encourage, build up, prepare, sustain and fortify people. And in the end when they get what they want they abandon us, turn on us and disavow that we even helped them to get where they are.

They taunt us “I thought you said you were someone? I thought you were going somewhere?”

They wait on us to die; they say “Oh they won’t last long! It’s only a matter of time before they die off.”

The sad part is, is that this behaviour is expected of Christians “The light of the world”. It’s becoming standard in this day and age.

So we the remnant are forced to be on our own, in the depths of the wilderness, at the top of the mountain alone and cold. Praying and fasting to God, seeking direction, strength and encouragement.

David was viewed as scum and pestilence but here is the twist in the plot. God was making him a kingdom and an army in the process. His army wasn’t made up of Christians; the Bible says that daily the rogues, vagabonds and criminals would join David. (1 Sam 22:2) HAHAHAHHAHA

Isn’t that something, I can identify with this. Some of my best friends aren’t Christians but the people who have a knowledge of God but are not necessarily living the life.

So it’s with this army of outcasts that God uses David to conquer the Philistines and other territory for him. You see it's not people who fight for the same cause as you that bring success, but people who believe in the same cause as you. You can fight for something out of duty but not fight for it out of passion.

When you do something out of duty you can quit any day, but once you have that passion nothing can stop you.

Another example is how the city of Succoth did Gideon and his crew of 300 men. (Judges 8) Gideon was basically a punk! A scared, little, no name punk from a no name city, in a no name village, in a no name tribe, in a no name family.

None the less! God called him to kill the enemies of Israel, the Midianites.

Gideon was in pursuit of them and he asked the city of Succoth to give his men some bread and water so they could eradicate their enemies. The City Officials at Succoth thought, this small band of men can’t possibly defeat the Midianites, so they taunted him by saying “I don’t see your enemies defeated why should we help you?” Gideon told them “Just for that, when I defeat them I will whip you with desert thorns and briers”. Gideon traveled to the city of Peniel and made the same request, but he got the same reply. So he vowed to tear down their tower (their pride and accomplishments) when he returned in victory.

Now you may wonder how 1 man and 300 men can defeat the combination of two kingdoms with an army of approximately 135,000 men? Simple! Here’s the math, let me do it slowly so you can comprehend.

GOD + 0 = All the help you will EVER NEED

Still lost? Let me break it down like a fraction.

When you are in a war on paper, it’s good to have the artist on your side. Why? Because He has the eraser and can erase your problems. The Bible clearly states that God even created the destroyer, so getting rid of him is no problem. (Isaiah 54:16, 17)

God isn’t interested in numbers; the size of your enemy’s crew doesn’t matter. All Jesus needed was 12 men. And you see how they turned the world off its axis.

Gideon defeated his enemies and kept his word to the men at Succoth and Peniel.

So this is a letter of encouragement for all my Davids and Gideons out there, despite how people treat you, taunt you, ridicule you and use you. Take confidence that it was done to men whose names are in the Bible under honorable recommendation, and the only reason their enemies’ names are mentioned is for their shame. People usually reject what they don’t understand, I guess greatness can be hard to comprehend at times.

Much Love,
Daveion Lashley


Originally posted in 2006

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