Who Are You?

January 9, 2012

“…  The Jewish leaders sent priests and Temple assistants from Jerusalem to ask John, “Who are you?”  He came right out and said, “I am not the Messiah.” “Well then, who are you?” they asked. “We need an answer for those who sent us. What do you have to say about yourself?”   (John 1: 19-22 NLT)

According to the Bible there is somebody God wants us to be, there is some place we are to be, and there is something we are to be.  We will therefore never be fulfilled or happy until we have the right answers to questions like “Who are you?  What are you?”  and “Where are you?”

God confronts us with these questions because He loves us and wants us to be fulfilled and happy.  The priests and religious leaders asked John: “What do you have to say about yourself?” Perhaps a better way to ask the question would be to ask you what God has to say about yourself.  Then that question should be followed by the question: “Do you and God agree on what you say about yourself?”

It would be foolish to want and try to be more than God wants us to be.  But, life is too precious to be less than who and what and where God wants and has equipped us to be. Jesus said John the Baptist was the greatest man ever born of woman.  I’m convinced that was because John the Baptist had the right answers to these questions.

You can also have the right answers to these great questions.  I challenge you to pursue God until He finds you and shows you who and what and where He wants you to be.  This the best way to have a truly happy New Year.

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Posted by Dick Woodward

Unbelief That Shuts Our Mouth

December 2, 2011

“But now, since you didn’t believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak until the child is born.” (Luke 1:20)

A teenager once asked me this thoughtful question about Christmas:  “Since there was so much hype about the birth of Jesus Christ, why is it that thirty years later nobody seemed to believe in Him?  You would think everyone would have just been waiting for Him to begin His ministry!”

Actually, there were only a handful of people who knew about that first Christmas.  The first one to know was a priest named Zechariah.  He and his wife Elizabeth were godly people, very advanced in years.  They had no children and the angel Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his wife were going to have a child who would be the last of the prophets to tell us about the coming of the Messiah.  Their son, whom they were to call John, would actually point at Christ and introduce Him to this world.

Zechariah did not believe the angel.  He was therefore told that everything he had heard was going to happen, but he would be smitten mute and not be able to tell anyone until his child was born.  This priest had the greatest sermon to preach that any priest ever had.  God was going to intersect human history!  But he could not preach it because of his unbelief.

Before you are too hard on Zechariah, let me ask you a question.  The New Testament tells us more than three hundred times that God is going to intersect human history a second time when Jesus Christ comes back again.  Have you ever told anybody about that Christmas to be?

 Or does your unbelief shut your mouth?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

Who Are You?

October 19, 2011

“…  Who are you? What do you say about yourself?”  (John 1:22)

 John the Baptist was the greatest man and the greatest prophet ever born of woman according to Jesus, yet there’s very little space given to him in the Gospels.  His greatness as a man and as a prophet seems to be attributed to the way he answered this question a delegation from Jerusalem was commissioned to ask him.

At first he did not want to answer the question because he did not want to talk about himself.  He just wanted to talk about Jesus Christ.  But when they told him they had to take an answer back to Jerusalem, he finally gave the answer that he was a voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord.  That was who he was, that was what he was, and that was where he was.

We might summarize John’s answer by saying that he accepted the limits of his limitations and the responsibility for his ability.  We bear a lot of needless pain because we do not accept the limits of our limitations.  But at the judgment most of us are not going to come up short because we did not accept our limits.  We will fall short because we did not accept the responsibility for our ability.

Therefore, we should have a realistic, objective evaluation of who we are, what we are, and where we are to be as we live out our three score and ten, or four score years of life in this world.  Who are you?  What do you say about yourself?  When you meet the Lord, are you going to be able to say that you were who, what, and where He willed you to be?

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Posted by Dick Woodward

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