Aren’t You Special?
Is your face skin a bit crackly… or are your muscles a twinge sore? In the last moments of May, we saw how this month has brought a fair share of sunshine to the Beloved adventure calendar, starting with the Koinonia on Sunday filled with fun, food, and volleyball. This was a precursor to the Memorial Day, celebratory ARC picnic in Stockton where the kids, teachers, and staff hosted some guests and their own special flavor of food and fun. Then Tuesday was spent loading the entire school into a fifty-three-foot semi-trailer for storage and transport to the eventual educational home in Stockton. My muscles are sore (all of them…), my skin is red (and crackly…), my memory banks are filled with images of laughter (and some grunting of heavy lifting), and my heart is rejoicing at how special our culture is. Special is a special word.
Special: (adjective)
Of a particular kind or character; not ordinary. Having a particular quality, virtue, or use of its own. Distinguished or different from what is usual or common. Designed or reserved for a particular purpose or occasion. Having a unique significance or importance.
Synonyms: exceptional, extraordinary, unique, unusual, uncommon, rare, select, particular, specific
In modern language, the word, “special,” has been used as a veiled insult at times, and on a few of those occasions there may even be justification for the usage. In the intended and proper usage of the term, there is a divine imprint that should be recognized. If you look again at the definition and synonyms of, “special,” it would be logical to conclude that, when applied to humanity, that adjective infers the working of a Creator’s heart and hands. Only God could design, form, and animate billions of people all to be a unique kind of “special.”
Why? Why is Beloved special? Why are each of us special? Because God was bored and so He mixed it up a little in our creation just to see what kind of divine entertainment He could make for the lounging angels…? Because Kay and I were bored so we decided to put blood, sweat, and MANY tears into plowing concrete to establish our Kingdom culture…?
Nope, none of the above. God is a purpose-filled God. What energized Kay and me was a purpose. There was a vision in the heart of God, and in our hearts of what it could or should look like, so we set our hands to the formation of the dirt that the Spirit of God could breathe life into. God produced the infinite and beautiful intricacies of humanity and we (by the grace of God) put together a special place for those special folks to form a special community.
This is how the Kingdom works, Beloved.
The Lord Yahweh answered him, “Arise and go! I have chosen this man to be my special messenger. He will be brought before kings, before many nations, and before the Jewish people to give them the revelation of who I am. And I will show him how much he is destined to suffer because of his passion for me.”
Acts 9:15-16 TPT
This discourse above was between the disciple (there’s that word again…) Ananias and the Lord Jesus about Saul… who was special, but mostly in an insulting kinda way. Paul (who at this time was still under the moniker of Saul) was literally infamous for his persecution of Christians and his vile destruction of the Ekklesia of their day. He used his God-created, God-designed, God-granted special gifts as a weapon against the God Who gave them to him. Consider that for a moment… how often do we see talents, gifts, abilities, and skills in others (and ourselves) being used AGAINST the very One who gave them? I did. In reflection, it is easy to see how I used divine attributes given to me by the grace and goodness of God to bring damage and pain to people around me and myself. Like Saul/Paul, I was taking what God gave me to be a blessing to my generation and was using it for selfish advantage and vain worthlessness.
Look at how faithful and true Jesus is by examining this stanza above. It is so typical of God to, “call those things that be not as though they were,” when giving instructions to his humble disciple Ananias about the character of Paul. Let me break this down a bit.
First Jesus said, “I have chosen this man to be my special messenger.” This statement is packed with theological consistencies about the heart of God. Notice the past tense application to Paul’s, “choosing,” by Jesus. There was no good thing in how Paul was living his life at this time. His life’s motivation was to destroy the believers and the church. In other places, Paul is insinuated as the greatest enemy of the church at that time, and a murderer. There was nothing in the life or fruits of Paul that would make him desirable by the Jesus he was persecuting EXCEPT Jesus made him and knew what he was made of!
Please take note that in the days of the First Church, the greatest enemy was from, “within,” (Saul, a Jewish leader) not from the outside. Beloved, it is not the government, the cabal, the globalists, the groomers, and the anti-Christ that can ever hurt the church… it is only the church that can truly hurt the church. I believe this is why Paul, in commenting about his identity before his radical transformation, said, “of sinners I was chief.” One of the greatest sins any person can find themselves propagating is to hurt the church, to abuse the Bride of Christ. It is actually an, “abomination,” in God’s eyes:
These six [things] doth the LORD hate: yea, seven [are] an abomination unto him: … he that soweth discord among brethren.
Proverbs 6:16, 19b KJV
Yet, look how lovingly merciful Jesus was to redeem the character of Paul and position him as one of the greatest assets to the Kingdom in his generation and beyond. When God has chosen you, who cares whether others have rejected you or not. This is a powerful exhortation of God for each of us!
In the next statement by Jesus, we have some insight into the way God thinks about the Great Commission. Here is what Jesus said, “He will be brought before kings, before many nations, and before the Jewish people to give them the revelation of who I am.”
If you are hearing with the ears of your heart, you are aware that government, politics, and influential people are specifically targeted by the Head of the Church in His mission strategy. The modern Christians have been told to stay out of the government… stay out of politics… stay out of the places of influence… yet Jesus specifically sent Paul INTO these realms. Jesus took the enemy’s greatest weapon against the church (Saul) and turned him into a destructive movement (Apostle Paul) against the enemy (the devil, government, politics, Babylon system) that turned the church into the most powerful force in the Roman empire… so powerful in fact that Christianity eventually was the precipitating force that caused the complete demise of the largest kingdom/empire/nation that ever existed to that point.
What could the church do today if we really believed in our own power, authority, identity, and calling?
Paul’s commission was to bring a revelation of Jesus. This makes the message simple and the mission concise. This is our call as well today. It is imperative to reveal Jesus to this evil, sick, lost, fearful, enslaved world. Not reveal religion… not reveal judgment… not reveal wrath… not reveal our opinions… but reveal JESUS!
If you are Paul, you may be ready to celebrate the super-cool and fun times ahead based upon the declarations from Jesus about your destiny. Chosen messenger… brought before kings… reveal Jesus… what an awesome blessing God has bestowed on him! But there is more to the message yet…
“And I will show him how much he is destined to suffer because of his passion for me”, says Jesus.
Yikes!
Look at the dichotomy of that statement. BECAUSE Paul will be passionate about Jesus, it will put him in situations of great suffering. Well, that just does not compute with the progressive, self-involved, self-satisfying, self-preserving, self-centered, self-concerned, modern “church-i-anity” participant of the present. Those folks go to church for what they can get OUT of God… not for what they can do FOR God.
How many people have prayed for, sang for, and asked for more passion? I wonder if they would still operate in that manner if they knew this principle in Paul’s life. His suffering, his persecution, his hardships, and his struggles were BECAUSE of his passion for Jesus, not in spite of it. I know a minuscule amount of this dichotomous relationship between passion and suffering, and it has priceless value in my heart. I cannot define it, nor is there a rational explanation for it, but, nevertheless, it is absolutely true. And the majority of folks today will never experience it because they are in bondage to comfort and controlled by the pain (or threat) inflicted by whichever slave master wants their allegiance. Just look around at the cowardly submission to the “woke” cultural influencers and demagogues. They have made the bowing of the knee in obeisance a requirement to existence. Look at Target, Kohls, Chick-fil-A, Pfizer, and a million other vassals who lick the boots of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue.
Paul was a hero. Paul was special. Paul was courageous. Paul changed the world. Paul was energized by passion which led him into places of terrible suffering… but he ran his race, won his prize, and received a crown that was special to him.
We each are being offered a special crown, for a life lived in a special way, energized by a special passion, and under the threat of special sufferings.
Will you respond to the message you are called for?
I love you, really… (don’t kill the messenger),
Steve
