RanBec Ministries

Ministry Can Be Tough

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with skin diseases, drive out demons. You have received free of charge; give free of charge. Matthew 10:8 (HCSB)

This sounds like powerful stuff. Who wouldn't want to have the kind of power to do these things? But consider again. Who wants to hang out with sick and diseased people? Who wants to be around demons? All of the sudden this does not sound like something one might want to do. In the day in which we live consider what this might mean. Spend a lot of time in the hospital and with hospice in the last moments of death. Skin diseases often smell quite bad. Hang around with those who have some of those deadly smelly diseases. Oh, and consider a ministry to the crazies. We give it other names today, but they are surely possessed with some kind of demon.

All of the sudden you might be one who is saying, "You couldn't pay me to do that!" That's precisely the point. Jesus told those disciples to go and give freely in His name because they had received freely. Now it really doesn't sound like something most believers would want to do!

We'd rather witness to our next door neighbor. They look like us, smell like us, and they probably don't strike us as being crazy. The good news is, it's the next door neighbor people that the disciples had probably been telling about Jesus. So, you and I can enjoy the opportunities we might have. But the other side of the coin is that they were to go to the hard places and bear the name of Jesus, too. And so should we.

I wonder how many believers are willing to go to the hard places? And, how many are willing to go for free, bearing their own expenses for doing so? God is love, but it is His love that compels Him to ask us to go to the hard places to tell those people of His love.

So what about it? Are you ready to go? What are you going to do if the Spirit asks you to go: rebel or yield?

--Randy Davis