1 O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.
If you read this 10 minute of God you just read four verses. Really good. But now go back and pray those verses back to your Father in Heaven!
WHY?
Why consider and apply the Zaccheaus Principle?
I mean God is in charge of drawing people to Himself. Does he really need us?
My favorite story from the Old Testament that inspires me to “want to want” to share the Good News is found in II Kings 7:3-11:
3 Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? 4 If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”
5 At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, 6 for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!” 7 So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
8 The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
9 Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”
10 So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went into the Aramean camp and no one was there—not a sound of anyone—only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” 11 The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
I’ve heard this passage preached on both while in college, while at FBCG from Pastor Kevin Engel, and this summer Grant Diamond used it during Summer Impact with fifth and sixth grades. And yet I am amazed how few have discovered such an inspiring text in the Old Testament with regards to SHARING one’s great JOY, abundance, and good fortune. The four lepers get it! When one is fortunate to discover amazing fortune the reaction is to shout it out to others.
I’d suggest that if you won the LOTTO you wouldn’t rush home and hide out in your crawl space with concerns that someone will discover you. You’d tweet, profile update, text, email, phone friends, and probably be invited to share on the local news. You’d be telling OTHERS! Your joy would be oozing out onto others. Crack open a bit TODAY and ooze the joy out onto another. This IS the day that the Lord has made…REJOICE and tell someone else!
Bruce McEvoy
Pastor of Family and Serving
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