10"For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,11So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.12"For you shall go out with joy, And be led out with peace; The mountains and the hills Shall break forth into singing before you, And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
We can examine our hearts and lives to make sure that we have confidence in the Word of God. If we're allowing the Word to shape our lives and we have developed an enthusiasm to live out God's truth, then our lives will reflect His presence and the effectiveness of His truth. We can communicate to the world that we serve a God Who loves us, walks with us, directs our lives, and Who offers a way of salvation through which people can know unlimited love and perfect peace. God is calling us into a love relationship with Himself, and He will make Himself known to us as we seek Him diligently.
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We have been given the responsibility to be representatives of Christ in this world, and He desires to use us to speak words of life for Him. This passage in 2nd Corinthians 5 is a reminder:
18Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,19that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.20Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
When First Baptist Church in Gloversville, New York was demolished back in 2011, its church bell, dating back to the 1800's, was given to the city. Now it's missing...
According to a report on the Time Warner Cable News website for the Albany/Capital Region, the 5-foot, 2500-pound brass bell had been placed into a storage site, which was apparently no easy task. It was noticed that the bell was missing several weeks ago when workers went to move it to its new home at the Fulton County Museum. Gloversville police chief Donald Van Deusen says, "I find it hard to believe one person would be able to go in there and remove it." He added, "I'm assuming somebody would have to have some large equipment and several individuals involved in this."
Mayor Dayton King says, "Right now we're looking at all the scrap yards, all the antique places, anybody that might have any interest in this value." He says the biggest challenge is figuring out when the bell was actually stolen. He says, "We're not ruling anything out, we're turning over every stone that we can."
OK, this is quite the mystery. It seems something this large would have turned up at some point, and you just have to wonder how this relic may have been damaged in the process.
And, I was curious about what happened to First Baptist Church. A Google search does not yield a listing, but I did come across a "Lost Landmarks" site, which had a page called "The Leaning Tower of Gloversville." The author writes, "The steeple of the First Baptist Church remained Gloversville New York’s compass pole even after the sanctuary fell vacant and cracks zig-zagged across its brownstone façade. In its absence, the view down South Main Street will seem flat and featureless."
A closed church, now a stolen bell. It must have been grand many years ago as the church bell chimed out a glorious sound, beckoning people to come to attend. The bell was the church's voice, physically speaking, but we do know that the people were really the ones who ultimately made up the church and would be the ambassadors for the church and for the Lord.
But, I do think about the concept of the stolen bell and relate it to how the church's voice to our culture is in danger of being stolen away. If we're not careful, we can allow the enemy to steal our voice away. We have to make sure that he is not inhabiting our minds, inhibiting our witness, and intimidating us into silence. If we accommodate sin, that prevents our light from shining as brightly. Our love for the Lord grows cold, and the practice of our faith, instead of providing a call to the culture to follow Jesus, becomes less vibrant and perhaps even hidden, stolen away by a relentless enemy.
Who knows why First Baptist Church closed - before the building fell into disrepair and was eventually demolished, there must have been some sort of decline in the congregation. We have to be so sure that we are allowing God to work through us, that we are devoted to growing in our faith individually and collectively and patterning our lives after God's Word.
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