Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Being A Good Samaritan

 Doing Good Works

“How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him” (Acts 10:38 NIV).

On Friday 9 October 2020, I received a message from the Lord Jesus through a dream that He made me understand that He has anointed and called all Christians to do good, but many ignore the direction of the Holy Spirit when the Lord opens an opportunity for them to do good. Furthermore, the Lord added that no selfless effort a Christian employs in doing good to others will go unnoticed (Mark 10:30).

Kindly allow us to share some of our experiences here. Since my wife’s mother and my father live about 300KM away from us, as a family, we often set out to visit them and on about six or seven occasions we experienced problems with our car with some mechanical issues even after we had it fully serviced before we would embark on our journey. However, driving an older used car and acquiring the services of backyard mechanics (we are not being ungrateful here) there would always be some additional mechanical issues that would remain unresolved.

Like the Apostle Paul and Luke (Acts 21:5), we never go on our journey without praying and the Lord has preserved our lives on all our journeys Praise be to Him!  Now, of all those unfortunate situations only one ‘Good Samaritan’ (without us asking for help) came our way on a very cold, windy, and rainy day may the Lord bless that man and his precious family for opening their hearts and their home for me and my wife and children. On that cold day, that man was in a hurry to go fetch his wife at work after that he suspended all his activities and got his wife involved and they invited us to their place while he arranged for someone to get our Van fixed (Matthew 25:31-40).

Do Not Grow Tired of Serving Others

Again, in August this year (2020) we had another incident with our Van and the same family ungrudgingly opened their hearts again and helped us with accommodation, however this time the Lord wanted them to hear the Precious and Priceless Gospel from me and that was God remembering the good they did to me and others (Acts 10:4-5). Therefore, if we help others or give grudgingly we forfeit our blessings and we hinder the Lord to save others (Matthew 16:23) and we deny God the glory  (Colossians 3:23).

In addition, we should remember that the bible says that if we ignore the cry of the poor for help when it is our turn to ask for help from God Almighty, He will ignore our cries too (Proverbs 21:13). In 2009 when I attended a Bible School pastoral course, I was unemployed and as a result, I was unable to pay my tuition fees so a brother in the Lord paid on my behalf about two installments without letting me know and when I approached the dean to explain my situation to him he told me that someone paid for me. Now that was God!

In conclusion, we can recall how happy the Lord was with a dear sister in our ministry who showed kindness to a needy person and for her effort, the Lord promised to bless the sister for her selfless efforts and that her good works of ministry will serve as a testimony on the day of the Lord and we know that day is very near (Revelation 14:13). Let us be eager and remember our poor brethren amongst us our giving serves as thanks offering to the Lord (1 Chronicles 29:14).

Brethren as a final encouragement, we all still have an opportunity to change the lives of others around us. The Lord has not just called those in ministry but everyone to work for the good of others and you too will be rewarded even if you start today please consider this scripture (Matthew 20:6-14).

 Blessed Grace

Brother Glenn