THE BATON OF RESCUE

Behind the scenes gets substantial credit for getting major things accomplished.  Every success one individual experiences is surely backed by hundreds of others whose participation was vital; yet receive little recognition.  Thus, it is with the Kingdom of God.  Great things.  Clueless as to who exactly were the causers....except to yield credit to God.

Ours, you realize, is to receive the batons of rescue.  Such is our assignment; our purpose.  To live to reach and to rescue is paramount in both importance as well as power.  There is no one exempt from the need of eternal rescue.

The baton is central in understanding.  Jesus hit earth with the intention of rescue. That's why he entered.  No person could survive life without this valiant effort from Heaven above.  The hope sustained is sheerly mind boggling.  The heart can't contain such a thrill; it can only believe it.

But have you thought about Jesus?  In his process of soberly reaching to us, he died. Jesus succumbed to the pressures of sin; even death.  He took everything warped about us--past, present, and future--and admitted before Father that it was he who was guilty as charged; not one of us.

But there is a problem....he died.  When that happened his close disciples assumed the game was over.  They gathered their toys and went home...in devastating defeat.  Not only was their day ruined, so were their dreams for what they had believed would become.  Although Jesus did die, the baton was not to be cast aside for the Holy Spirit resurfaced and brought Jesus to a new kind of living.

For you--for me--we live from day to day making firm efforts to rescue.  Often we hit repeated days of collapse.  We don't have what it takes.  We can't cut it.  Nothing works.  Hope dissipates.  We are left to feel about ourselves precisely how the disciples felt about Jesus; we are dead to life and feel that we are going nowhere.

But then...  But then the same thing that happened to Jesus must be remembered has happened to us.  It isn't a new determination; but rather a new life we possess due to the identical source that kept the baton going with Jesus...the Holy Spirit.

We are too tempted to operate from our own plausible system of try this and avoid that.  We must recall the baton of the Holy Spirit is given to believers for specific reason.  He is the understander and the director of those who feel sorely lost.  We are the vessels as was Jesus.  What brought him back to life brings us back to life.

It is this fascinating process from Heaven that we find ourselves engaged.  We are in over our heads.  Our calling is one of big question; Do we believe God could use us to extend the baton to our neighbor?  And when we die trying just remember....Jesus did, too.