Late night thoughts

Hey Everyone,

It's almost midnight and I am up watching "Aliens" on Spike TV while I wait for a pot of beans to cool so I can put them in the refrigerator. I guess as fatherhood approaches I should get used to these late night hours. As I am sitting here I begin to ponder a thought that waxes on the spiritual side of things.

Last week the teenagers I work with were challenged from God's word in 2 Corinthians 5:16-21. For those of you not familiar with that passage I encourage you to go look it up because there are some great lessons there. The long and short of it is Paul challenging the Corinthian congregations of the Lord's Church to be ambassadors for Jesus Christ. I challenged my students to think of one person who who needs to give their life to Jesus in baptism or someone who needs to recommit their lives to Christ. More than that I challenged them to write the name of that person down and begin praying for that person daily. It is my hope that myself and the teens will hold one another accountable in this.

In keeping with this idea I started to think about people in scripture who were ambassadors. The first one who came to my mind was Ananias in Acts Chapter 9. For those of you who don't know who Ananias is, he is the ambassador that God sent to Saul to help convert him. As I put my thoughts for class together these are some of the questions I came up with.

Was Saul doing something wrong?
Is it difficult to stop doing something wrong that you have thought was right?
What does it usually take to make us stop doing something wrong?
Who is the Ananias in your life?
Will you be Ananias for someone?

As I come to a close I would ask you to think on these things. Too much of the time we talk about Christianity but we never put that talk into action. I challenge you to begin challenging your thinking. If you want to get some dialogue going on these questions feel free to drop me a line at pmcartwright82@gmail.com and I would be happy to talk with you. I hope you are as blessed by these thoughts as I am by all of you.

Be Strong and Courageous,
Paul

p.s. Any of the scriptures I have mentioned can be found by clicking on the reference. I made them links to an online Bible