Heartiness v. Heartlessness Towards Others
It is Christ…who also maketh intercession for us.…The Spirit…maketh intercession for the saints. (ROMANS 8:34,27)
Do we need any more argument than this to become intercessors — that Christ “ever liveth to make intercession”; that the Holy Spirit “maketh intercession for the saints”? Are we living in such a vital relationship to our fellow men that we do the work of intercession as the Spirit-taught children of God? Begin with the circumstances we are in — our homes, our business, our country, the present crisis as it touches us and others — are these things crushing us? Are they badgering us out of the presence of God and leaving us no time for worship? Then let us call a halt, and get into such living relationship with God that our relationship to others may be maintained on the line of intercession whereby God works His marvels.
Beware of outstripping God by your very longing to do His will. We run ahead of Him in a thousand and one activities, consequently we get so burdened with persons and with difficulties that we do not worship God, we do not intercede. If once the burden and the pressure come upon us and we are not in the worshipping attitude, it will produce not only hardness toward God but despair in our own souls. God continually introduces us to people for whom we have no affinity, and unless we are worshipping God, the most natural thing to do is to treat them heartlessly, to give them a text like the jab of a spear, or leave them with a rapped-out counsel of God and go. A heartless Christian must be a terrible grief to Our Lord.
Are we in the direct line of the intercession of our Lord and of the Holy Spirit? (From My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition)
1 Again the people of Isra'el did what was evil from ADONAI's perspective, and ADONAI handed them over to the P'lishtim for forty years. 2 There was a man from Tzor'ah from the family of Dan, whose name was Manoach; his wife was barren, childless. 3 The angel of ADONAI appeared to the woman and said to her, "Listen! You are barren, you haven't had a child, but you will conceive and bear a son. 4 Now, therefore, be careful not to drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don't eat anything unclean. 5 For indeed you will conceive and bear a son. No razor is to touch his head, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb. Moreover, he will begin to rescue Isra'el from the power of the P'lishtim." 6 The woman came and told her husband; she said, "A man of God came to me; his face was fearsome, like that of the angel of God. I didn't ask him where he came from, and he didn't tell me his name. 7 But he said to me, 'Listen! You will conceive and bear a son, so now don't drink any wine or other intoxicating liquor, and don't eat anything unclean, because the child will be a nazir for God from the womb until the day he dies.'" 8 Then Manoach prayed to ADONAI, "Please, Adonai, let the man of God you sent come again to us and teach us what we should do for the child who will be born." 9 God paid attention to what Manoach said, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field, but her husband Manoach wasn't with her. 10 The woman hurried and ran to tell her husband, "Here! That man, the one who came to me the other day, he's come again!" 11 Manoach got up, followed his wife, went to the man and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to the woman?" He answered, "I am." 12 Manoach asked, "Now, when what you said comes true, what are the guidelines for raising the child? What should be done for him?" 13 The angel of ADONAI said to Manoach, "The woman should take care to do everything I said to her. 14 She shouldn't eat anything that comes from a grapevine, she shouldn't drink wine or other intoxicating liquor, and she shouldn't eat anything unclean. She should do everything I ordered her to do." 15 Manoach said to the angel of ADONAI, "Please stay with us a bit longer, so that we can cook a young goat for you." 16 The angel of ADONAI said to Manoach, "Even if I do stay, I won't eat your food; and if you prepare a burnt offering, you must offer it to ADONAI." For Manoach did not know that he was the angel of ADONAI. 17 Manoach said to the angel of ADONAI, "Tell us your name, so that when your words come true we can honor you." 18 The angel of ADONAI answered him, "Why are you asking about my name? It is wonderful." 19 Manoach took the kid and the grain offering and offered them on the rock to ADONAI. Then, with Manoach and his wife looking on, the angel did something wonderful - 20 as the flame went up toward the sky from the altar, the angel of ADONAI went up in the flame from the altar. When Manoach and his wife saw it, they fell to the ground on their faces. 21 But the angel of ADONAI did not appear again to Manoach or his wife. Then Manoach realized it had been the angel of ADONAI. 22Manoach said to his wife, "We will surely die, because we have seen God!"23 But his wife said to him, "If ADONAI had wanted to kill us, he wouldn't have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from us, and he wouldn't have shown us all this or told us such things at this time." 24The woman bore a son and called him Shimshon. The child grew, and ADONAI blessed him. 25 The Spirit of ADONAI began to stir him when he was in the Camp of Dan, between Tzor'ah and Eshta'ol.
1 Shimshon went down to Timnah, and in Timnah he saw a woman who was one of the P'lishtim. 2 He came up and told his father and mother, "I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the P'lishtim. Now get her for me to be my wife." 3 His father and mother replied, "Isn't there any woman from the daughters of your kinsmen or among all my people? Must you go to the uncircumcised P'lishtim to find a wife?" Shimshon said to his father, "Get her for me. I like her." 4 His father and mother didn't know that all this came from ADONAI, who was seeking grounds for a quarrel with the P'lishtim. (At that time the P'lishtim were ruling Isra'el.) 5 Shimshon went down with his father and mother to Timnah. When they came to the vineyards of Timnah, a young lion roared at him. 6 The Spirit of ADONAI came powerfully upon Shimshon, and barehanded he tore the lion to pieces as easily as if it had been a young goat. But he didn't tell his father or mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman and found he still liked her. 8 Awhile later, as he was returning to claim his bride, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and saw that there was now a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. 9He scraped the honey out into his hands and went on, eating as he went; and when he came to his father and mother, he gave them some; and they ate too. But he didn't tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion. 10 His father went down to the woman, and there Shimshon gave a banquet - this is what the young men used to do. 11When the P'lishtim saw him, they provided thirty companions to be with him. 12 Shimshon said to them, "Let me present you with a riddle. If you can solve it within the seven days of the banquet and tell me the solution, I will give you thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes. 13But if you can't solve it, you give me thirty linen shirts and thirty changes of good clothes." They answered, "Tell us the riddle, we want to hear it."14 So he said to them, "Out of the eater came food; out of the strong came sweetness." Three days passed, and they couldn't solve the riddle.15 On the seventh day, they said to Shimshon's wife, "Coax your husband into telling us the solution to the riddle. Otherwise we'll burn down your father's house and you with it. You two called us here to turn us into paupers, didn't you?" 16 Shimshon's wife went to him in tears and said, "You don't love me, you hate me! You told a riddle to my fellow countrymen, and you haven't told me the answer." He said to her, "Look, I haven't even told it to my father and mother! Should I tell you?" 17 But she had been crying throughout the seven days of the banquet; so on the seventh day, because she had kept pressing him, he told her the solution; and she passed it on to her people. 18 Then, before sundown on the seventh day, the men of the city said to him, "What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?" Shimshon answered, "If you hadn't plowed with my young cow, you wouldn't have solved my riddle now." 19Then the Spirit of ADONAI came over him powerfully. He went down to Ashkelon, killed thirty of their men, took their good clothes, and gave them to the men who had "solved" the riddle. He was boiling with rage, so he went straight up to his father's house, 20 and his wife was given to the companion who had been best man at the wedding.
1 But after a while, during the wheat-harvest season, Shimshon went to see his wife. He brought a young goat for her and said to her father, "I want to go to my wife in her room." But he wouldn't let him. 2 Her father said, "I really thought you hated her altogether, so I gave her to your best man. But her younger sister - isn't she even prettier? Why not take her instead?" 3 Shimshon said to them, "This time I'm through with the P'lishtim! I'm going to do something terrible to them!" 4 So Shimshon went and caught three hundred foxes. Then he took torches, tied pairs of foxes to each other by their tails, and put a torch in the knot of every pair of tails. 5 Then he set the torches on fire and let the foxes loose in wheat fields of the P'lishtim. In this way he burned up the harvested wheat along with the grain waiting to be harvested, and the olive orchards as well. 6The P'lishtim asked, "Who did this?" They answered, "Shimshon the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, because he took Shimshon's wife and gave her to his best man." Then the P'lishtim came up and burned both her and her father to death. 7 Shimshon said to them, "I will certainly have my revenge on you for doing such a thing; but after I do, I'll stop." 8Infuriated, he began killing them right and left; it was a massacre. Then he went down and stayed in the cave at the 'Eitam Rock. 9 The P'lishtim went up, pitched camp in Y'hudah and attacked Lechi. 10 The men of Y'hudah said, "Why are you attacking us?" They replied, "To arrest Shimshon, that's why - to treat him the way he treated us." 11 Then 3,000 men from Y'hudah went down to the cave at the Eitam Rock and said to Shimshon, "Don't you know that the P'lishtim are our rulers? What are you doing to us?" He answered, "I've only treated them the way they treated me." 12 They said to him, "We've come down to arrest you and hand you over to the P'lishtim." Shimshon replied, "Swear to me that you won't fall on me yourselves." 13 They said to him, "No, but we will tie you up and hand you over to them. However, we promise not to kill you." So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. 14 When he got to Lechi, the P'lishtim came running and shouting at him; and the Spirit of ADONAI came on him powerfully. The ropes on his arms became as weak as burnt flax and fell from his arms. 15 He found a fresh donkey jawbone, took it in his hand, and with it he struck down a thousand men.16 Shimshon said, "With the jawbone of a donkey I left heaps piled on heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men!" 17 After he finished speaking he threw the jawbone away, and the place came to be called Ramat-Lechi [jawbone heights]. 18 Then he felt very thirsty, so he called on ADONAI, saying, "You accomplished this great rescue through your servant. But am I now to die from thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?" 19 Then God made a gash in the crater at Lechi, and water came out. When he had drunk, his spirit came back; and he revived. This is why the place was called 'Ein-HaKorei [the spring of him who called], and it is there in Lechi until now. 20 He judged Isra'el in the period of the P'lishtim for twenty years.
27 Nevertheless, to you who are listening, what I say is this: "Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 "If someone hits you on one cheek, offer the other too; if someone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well. 30 "If someone asks you for something, give it to him; if someone takes what belongs to you, don't demand it back. 31 "Treat other people as you would like them to treat you. 32 What credit is it to you if you love only those who love you? Why, even sinners love those who love them.33 What credit is it to you if you do good only to those who do good to you? Even sinners do that. 34 What credit is it to you if you lend only to those who you expect will pay you back? Even sinners lend to each other, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing back! Your reward will be great, and you will be children of Ha`Elyon; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Show compassion, just as your Father shows compassion. 37 "Don't judge, and you won't be judged. Don't condemn, and you won't be condemned. "Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and you will receive gifts -- the full measure, compacted, shaken together and overflowing, will be put right in your lap. For the measure with which you measure out will be used to measure back to you!" 39 He also told them a parable: "Can one blind man lead another blind man? Won't they both fall into a pit? 40 A talmid is not above his rabbi; but each one, when he is fully trained, will be like his rabbi. 41 So why do you see the splinter in your brother's eye, but not notice the log in your own eye? 42 How can you say to your brother, `Brother, let me remove the splinter from your eye,' when you yourself don't see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite! First take the log out of your own eye; then you will see clearly, so that you can remove the splinter from your brother's eye! 43 "For no good tree produces bad fruit, nor does a bad tree produce good fruit. 44 Each tree is recognized by its own fruit -- figs aren't picked from thorn bushes, nor grapes from a briar patch. 45 The good person produces good things from the store of good in his heart, while the evil person produces evil things from the store of evil in his heart. For his mouth speaks what overflows from his heart. 46 "Why do you call me, `Lord! Lord!' but not do what I say? 47 Everyone who comes to me, hears my words and acts on them -- I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like someone building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on bedrock. When a flood came, the torrent beat against that house but couldn't shake it, because it was constructed well. 49 And whoever hears my words but doesn't act on them is like someone who built his house on the ground without any foundation. As soon as the river struck it, it collapsed and that house became a horrendous wreck!"(Complete Jewish Bible).
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