Beyond Proclamation - There must be a hand.

Several months back, my daily devotions landed me in Zechariah, chapter 11. As I was reading, verse 4 caught my attention. It says, "Pasture the flock marked for slaughter". Funny thing was, I read it as "Pastor" instead of "Pasture". Later that same day I read the passage again, and again I read "Pastor".

It wasn't until several days had past, during which I sought the Lord as to why this verse spoke to me, that I noticed that it said "Pasture." Surprised and embarrassed at my oversight, I began to dig into this passage and realized that God was telling Zechariah to lead-shepherd-pastor rebellious Israel.

What does this have to do with me? Good Question! It's the same question that I asked God in my prayers since that day.

Here's my take on it. Too often, there are people who seem to be written off by the church today as stubborn, unchanging, destined to fail and beyond hope. They're "marked for slaughter", both by their unrepentant hearts and and by Christians who deem them unworthy of the effort it would take to reach them.

These people will hardly set foot in a church (who would blame them after being written off), they won't sit under the proclamation of the Word and they won't join in a fellowship with the people they perceive as those who could care less.

However, just as God knew that there would be hard times in the future of Israel, he knows that there is coming a time when these "write-offs" will no longer have the chance for redemption.

If they won't sit under the proclamation of the Word in a church-building, then the Church needs to reach out to them. What does it take? Relationships! I know now why God would not allow me to declare a college major in anything other than Church counseling ministries - it's relational. It's reaching out to the lost, hurting, rejected and seemingly hopeless with a message backed by a physical expression of God's love and power.

Proclamation is great, but only if it is heard. The Word is powerful and even more so when presented in a relevant way by a caring, outstretched hand.