Shake The Dust From Your Feet

 

How long are we to pursue someone for the Gospel? When do we, in a sense, give up and move on?

In Acts, Paul and Barnabas go to Antioch and are rejected by the Jews and chief men of the city. They responded by shaking the dust off their feet when they left before moving on to Iconium. Why is this so significant?

In Matthew 10:14 it states “And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” To “shake the dust off your feet” was a symbolic gesture that you were to have no more to do with them and would take nothing that was theirs. Let them keep their dust. Their beliefs.

So again, I ask: When do we move on from trying to save someone? Is it after we’ve shared the Gospel once, twice? After a month, a year, a decade? How long must a person reject the Gospel before we conclude that they will never believe and we shake the dust off our feet and move on? I ask because in a sense I don’t know. At the same time I would like to say the Holy Spirit would speak to our hearts when it’s time to move on, but at the same time that can be so difficult.

Now that’s not to say we then ignore the person or remove them from our lives, that’s not what I mean by “move on”. But Jesus also said “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” That is to say, as Matthew Henry puts it “Talk not of the deep things of God to those whom you know to be wallowing in sin.” In other words, stop talking about God and the Gospel to those whom have no interest. We shouldn’t dwell on one person forever. We must utilize our time and move on and share the Gospel with someone who will actually accept it. Maybe our involvement with them should be reduced to simply praying for them. Because literally that is the most we can do. As the old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.” I guess you could translate that to “you can lead a soul to living water, but you can’t make him drink.” When a heart is hardened against God, sometimes God decides it’s best to leave it that way. As it was with Pharaoh, or when Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews “Where I am going you cannot come!” (John 8). Jesus literally gave them a death sentence to hell. Not because He didn’t offer them a chance of salvation, but because He saw the hardness of their hearts and knew they would never believe. He wasn’t speaking authoritatively, but prophetically.

As always, most my blogs are very much relevant to me. That is why I write. There are family members who we have tried getting into the family of God for years. I have friends who I have shared the Gospel with numerous times, a few quite recently, but haven’t accepted. Perhaps my involvement with them now should be to just pray, as I have been. To bring up the topic again would be to bring it upon deaf ears. It hurts to say that, but it’s true. I wish I could bring up the topic everyday, or think of some new way to word it so as to persuade them. But nothing we do can ever persuade someone to believe. Only God’s Word can do that.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

After all, it is not our job to save souls. It is our job to reveal the Name by which they must be saved. We plant the seed and the Spirit does the rest. From there it is up to them to either accept or reject.

Go out and plant seeds brothers and sisters, but waste not your water on the dust of those who will never accept.

God Bless.

 

 

If You Lack Wisdom

I have definitely been lacking in the wisdom department as of late. It doesn’t help when I look within myself to handle situations or to even sometimes, make seemingly irrelevant decisions. Decisions have consequences, and one needs wisdom to handle those consequences; although all consequences could be avoided if wisdom was there to begin with.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” -James 1:5

Why do I find wisdom so hard to obtain when God clearly states here that He will freely and generously give it to all who ask? Am I asking wrong, am I not using the right words? Or do I not recognize wisdom when I see it.

Perhaps it’s how I ask. One would assume it’s as simple as “Yo God, give me wisdom?”, maybe it is. Not to go all Greek on you, but “let him ask” in this passage is written in the present active imperative tense, which means to “keep on asking”, or quite literally, “to beg.”

It’s not just asking once, but asking over and over and over. Because here’s the thing, I suck. I know I suck. I know I make sucky decisions constantly when left to my own devices and I need God’s wisdom. I may ask God for wisdom and He may give it to me in that present situation, but it’s not like He gives me an unlimited supply to where I will never screw up again. We are still sinful creatures redeemed by grace, and if we don’t constantly keep turning towards Christ asking for wisdom each and every day, we will continue make sucky decisions. That’s not to say that we’d be perfect if we had infinite wisdom, that’s preposterous. But having God’s wisdom flowing through our veins helps us see clearly the will of God in any given situation, and we still have the free will to choose.

That being said, I have circumstances, perhaps life changing circumstances unraveling in my life right now and in the not too distant future. I want to make sure I am using wisdom when passing through said circumstances. God has me here for a short while longer and I want to be sure I finish His work here before I move on towards other things. How do I finish His work here? With wisdom.