Tradition or Obedience

Mark 7:6-8, "And [Jesus] said to them, 'Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'"

What are the traditions that I have allowed to come in to take the place of obedience to God? Would it be the tradition of social or political correctness or certain management leadership styles or the most recent "in" thing or book or a cliché or fear that is keeping me from following the commandments of God to love one another, to be pure, and to take the gospel to the masses?

Traditions that may be keeping us from aggressively trusting God and moving forward in faith to do something about the 160 million street children of the world, the 13 million orphans of Africa, 90 percent of the people who have yet to know Christ in the Philippines, and the over 95 percent of people in India who do not know the Savior. So, is it tradition or obedience?

Go Get Them!

Please consider helping recruit for the ministry of Action International Ministries (ACTION). Simply share the need for additional missionaries and the ministries of ACTION to your family, friends, and especially your local fellowship; trust the Lord to use you to help recruit for the Great Commission. You can inform people to go to the ACTION Web site [www.actioninternational.org] and apply online as the Lord leads. At present we are trusting God for many additional missionaries to serve with street and underprivileged children, needy pastors and in other ACTION ministries worldwide.

Feeding the Hungry

by Pastor Ron Mcconnell

It is impossible to share Christ with a hungry man or child until we have fed him. It is also impossible to share Christ with a dead man. Some people feel that simply a program to feed the hungry without gospel witness is not “evangelical Christianity” but it is! Evangelical Christianity is Matthew 25 as well as Matthew 28. In Matthew 25 Jesus said, “Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these (feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, care for the sick, and visit those in prison) you did not do it to me.’ (Matt. 25:45). In Matthew 28, Jesus said “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:19-20)

The question of good deeds versus good beliefs, or physical versus spiritual, or the social versus the evangelical, is not an either/or issue. One without the other is incomplete, inadequate, and therefore un-Biblical and un-Christian. It is both/and. We cannot have evangelical Christianity without a social consciousness any more than we can have evangelical Christianity without evangelism. We are called to follow Christ! He will always lead us to human need, whether physical or spiritual.

Prayer

Intercession literally means to stand between two parties and plead the case of one to the other. It means that we must take into account the mandate for world evangelization.

Systematically pray around the world:

Sunday – Latin America

Monday – Central America

Tuesday – North America

Wednesday – Europe

Thursday – Africa

Friday – Asia

Saturday – Nations of the Pacific

Intercede for the national church and missionaries in these areas, and for the suffering and poor.