Fresh

Bread

Volume 33   Number 29 Jul 19, 2009

        1 Corinthians 4:15 says: For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me.
        As I was meditating on this scripture, the Lord spoke to me very clearly about His desire to speak to us and through us. He has certain people for each of us to hear His voice through. Not just someone to tell us what we should and should not do, but the voice of a father speaking the Word of God that brings forth fruit in our lives. Not only that, but He wants to use us to be that voice in the lives of others. Not only the voice of a father, but the voice of The Father.
        In Isaiah 55:10, the Word tells us that God gives seed to the sower. That is what He wants to do with the youth here at Bread of Life (and the world). He wants to give us seed to sow into others that they, in return, can sow, and so forth and so on. "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, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth...."
        The question God asked me as I was praying was: Is the voice coming out of me bringing forth fruit that the Lord would want others to imitate? The Lord wants to get us to the place where what we impart to others is a reflection of who He is.
        Together we here at the Youth On FYR program have made a decision that we want the fruit of our labor to be a reflection of Him to such a degree that He will draw all men unto Himself.
        In 1 Chronicles 13, we see that David made a very similar decision to bring the presence of God into the city. David and those with Him go and bring the Ark of the Covenant in on a cart. Verses 3 and 7 tell us: (David said) ..."let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we have not inquired at it since the days of Saul." ...So they carried the ark of God on a new cart from the house of Abinadab, and Uzza and Ahio drove the cart.
        In Verse 9, they come to a place called Chidon's threshing floor. This is where the ox stumbles, and as the cart begins to tip, Uzza reaches out his hand to keep the ark from falling, and Uzza dies right there. David begins to question how he can get the ark into the city. I think it was harder than David thought it would be. I also find it interesting that the place in which Uzza died was a threshing floor, a place where harvesters separate good wheat from bad. God is sifting these men.
        The desire of God is that we not only bring the ark into the city but that it be done according to His Word. In the next chapter, David begins to experience the work of God in his life. Change comes to David. He takes wives, has children, and goes into battle. Any time we decide to bring the presence of God in, we can expect God to begin working on us, changing things that need to be changed, and bringing forth things necessary to get the job done.
        As I looked a little deeper, I found that the name Uzza means "strength." David and his men were trying to bring the Ark of the Covenant into the city in their own strength and could not. It was not until Uzza died and the necessary change had taken place that David, in 1 Chronicles 15, successfully brought the ark in. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the horn, with trumpets and with cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps.
        David learned in this situation about the working of God in one's life. In Psalm 144:11-12, David is asking God to do a work in him for the very purpose of what we talked about in the beginning of this message: raising up others. Rescue me and deliver me from the hand of foreigners, whose mouth speaks lying words, and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood—that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style. Lord, work in us that we may see the lives of those we touch grow up to be pillars. Make us people who carry Your presence in such a way that we are worthy to be imitated.

Matthew Clements