Article by Doug Sharpe
Over the past 21 years walking with the Lord, I have learned that we all have unique paths and varied testimonies of our personal rebirth in Christ Jesus.
However, our ongoing inspiration and revelation truth, comes from a source available to us all.
Holy Spirit and The Bible.
A relationship and a book that is rock solid, unchanging, and filled with timeless wisdom.
A source of reliable counsel and ‘spiritual fixed points’ in an ever-changing, temporal world.
Early on in my walk with the Lord, I found it quite easy to embrace the refined consistency of relationship with Holy Spirit and the elegant truth of the bible. However, I would often simultaneously curse the chaos of the temporal world I lived in.
A world filled with those unwelcome things that would happen without adequate notice. Under my breath, I would rail against, ‘time wasting’ surprises and unplanned challenges. Difficult people, scheduling mistakes and personal disappointments.
All these things seemed to come out of no where, for no good reason, and would undoubtedly be met by me with shock and an emphatic, “How could this be happening?!”
The drama of that question would no doubt be followed by me targeting my offence on someone and their assignment of blame. “How could you!” is often what that sounded like.
And then to top of my performance, I would wrap myself in a comfy blanket of self pity and begin playing the role of victim.
It all seemed a perfectly appropriate response to me at the time. Shock and offense for the inconvenient and unpredictable happenings of the temporal world, followed by the assignment of blame and a pity party.
Here was the challenge with that process though. It kept happening to me. Over and over, again.
The world around me never let up. I continued to be shocked, disappointed, inconvenienced and angered. Until even the beauty of the spiritual fixed points in life were hard to see.
That is, until Holy Spirit showed me something in the bible.
The ever-changing temporal world of my biblical role models didn’t seem to bother them. In fact, they appeared to embrace the disorder they found themselves in.
But how?
Here is what Holy Spirit and the bible revealed to me as the answer to this question.
In Luke’s gospel, I read of the Samaritan who, when he was terribly inconvenienced by seeing the man on the road who was set upon by thieves, went to him, bandaged his wounds, and poured wine and oil on him and then put him on his animal.
Now that delay, definitely changed his ETA into Jericho!
Or, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chapter 5) the author lays out for us the qualifications of any person called by God as, “…requiring a willingness to serve those who are ignorant and going astray.”
But wait! The ignorant and those going astray can be some of the biggest, time-consuming, unwelcome surprises of the temporal world. Terribly inconvenient!
But let’s look at one more circumstance. Let’s look to Jesus.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus (clearly managing a busy schedule) heals a paralytic, two blind men, and a mute. Answers endless questions from the people about fasting and then raises a girl from the dead before going to all the cities and villages teaching, preaching, and healing. Busy, busy, busy!
But in Matthew chapter 9, it then says, Jesus came across a “…multitude of weary and scattered people that were like sheep without a shepherd.”
Sounds messy to me. But Jesus made time for them without hesitation or complaint.
But again, how?
Well, there is one thing each of these passages of the bible have in common that I now believe is key.
In all three situations, each of the individuals, The Samaritan, the person called of God to serve and Jesus himself, are all said to have had, “compassion” for the inconvenient, chaotically presented people they came across.
The Samaritan saw the injured man on the road and had ‘compassion’ for him. The person called by God to serve the ignorant and those going astray, was to do so with ‘compassion.’
And Jesus himself in Matthew Chapter 9 verse 36 was, “…moved with ‘compassion’,” when he saw the multitudes.
This is what Holy Spirit revealed to me out of the spiritual fixed points and timeless wisdom of the bible.
That chaos and disappointment of the temporal world is better met with compassion than offence. The kind of compassion that Jesus had for the weary and scattered which was - a sympathetic consciousness for their distress - and - a heart, filled with a desire to alleviate it.
Knowing this now, something miraculous has happened in my life. It appears I am no longer confronted by chaos and disorder but rather now, my days are filled with promise and possibilities and opportunities for me to alleviate the distress of others.
When disorder and the inconveniences of the temporal world present themselves to me, I try to train my focus on the person in the chaos and seek to understand their distress. All while praying that the Lord would show me how to best alleviate it.
So, join me! Praise the Lord for Holy Spirit and the spiritual fixed points of the bible.
And then let’s thank Him, for making this chaotic temporal world subject to change so that we can have ‘compassion’ and make a difference in the lives of the weary and scattered among us.
. . . Just like Jesus did.
