Being Useful
FeedMyShepherds.org has gone through many iterations. All but one of them has remained in my head as this site sat for years, stagnant and nearly forgotten. This new effort, perhaps, will be the start of something useful.
What is “useful”? Onesimus is one we can look to for a biblical understanding. Onesimus was a runaway slave who received the Good News of salvation, becoming a servant to Jesus Christ and His kingdom. The book of Philemon is Paul’s letter to the believer from whom Onesimus escaped. Onesimus’ name means “useful” in the Greek. Paul playfully explains that Onesimus is now truly useful because he has been redeemed and transformed. He now lives up to his name because he knows and serves the Living God.
Every Christian has been through this transformation. Our stories may be shaded differently, but the plot is the same. We sin because we are sinners. God’s Spirit convicts us about our sin, and we begin to understand that we are doomed. We want to save ourselves. We may try to be good and even do wonderful and benevolent things, but there is nothing within our own power or ability that can make us clean, new and innocent again. Having justly earned eternal death, we are slaves to sin with no way to redeem ourselves.
Jesus changes all of this. God calls us to Himself, not because we are good or worthy, but because He loves us. Through the death of His Son, Jesus the Messiah, the debt of our sin is forgiven and we are transformed from death to life. There is nothing we can do to earn this. It is God’s loving, gracious and merciful gift! Our redemption and salvation is DONE, complete, finished. We are free from enslavement to sin and the debt of sin’s consequences. With this great gift, our motives are no longer centered around the futile attempt to save ourselves.
This is the transformation that frees us to be useful. In exercising this gift of freedom, I pray that my written discoveries might be useful by pointing the reader always toward our God who loves us so much that He gave His Son to die so we may live.
Please think of these posts as little appetizers, encouraging you toward the real nourishment the Spirit has prepared for you in your own feasting on the Word of God.
Thank you. It reached me, and I’ve been hungry for a long time.
Pete, you’re so full of ####. I’m sorry I let you influence me in my much younger days. Libertarianism is 8 year old coal miners hooked on meth working 14 hours a day.
Hello Biff,
I wasn’t going to publish your comment for three reasons: it doesn’t seem to relate to the post, it contains language unsuitable for the site, and nobody reading it would be likely to understand the context. In the end I did publish it and am answering you because I don’t want simply to dismiss what you said, and because you gave me no other way to respond.
I left my involvement in politics behind ages ago. There was a time when I believed the Libertarian Party might help break the two-party system, and I put far more hope in political solutions than I would today.
From your comment, it seems that I influenced you in a way you now deeply regret. I believed what I wrote, and I did try to persuade people. You imply that my influence harmed you, and I take that seriously. If I did lead you wrongly, I ask your forgiveness. I have since learned that I was looking for hope in the wrong places.
What little I publish now very deliberately points to our one real and immediate Hope, Jesus Christ. The injustice and corruption we see around us are symptoms of something politics cannot repair. Governments, markets and political movements cannot save us. Jesus can, and does.
I don’t know what has happened in your life during all the years since our paths apparently crossed, but I did hear what you said.
Pete. . .