A CALL TO ACTION (PART 2)

Can I pray for you in any way?

Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.

In Christ, Mark

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

** Follow The Christian Walk on Twitter @ThChristianWalk

** Like posts and send friend requests to the author of The Christian Walk, Mark Cummings on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mark.cummings.733?ref=tn_tnmn

** Become a Follower of The Christian Walk at http://the-christian-walk.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Sympathize with each other.

1 Peter 3:8

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Believing in Jesus and willingly choosing to be a Christian isn’t a lifestyle of static passivity, complacency, or sedentary behavior.

Not even close.

Rather, throughout the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, we find the scriptures are a call to action, a call to be the people the Lord wants for us to be, a people who allow His will and way to reign supreme so to produce an abundance of goodness and righteousness in the way we go through life day after day.

In yesterday’s first message in this series, we saw the calling for Christians to be of one mind with that one mind being grounded in the person of Jesus, the Head of the body of His believers. This examination of the first call to action exposed the disturbing truth that the body of Christ (aka the Christian church) couldn’t be further right now from what God is calling it to. There’s an incredible amount of work to be done for the church to get where it’s supposed to be.

As we look at our scripture for today, one composed of a mere four words, we find a new call, one of several we’ll look at over the next few days as the Lord gives us demands on how we are to relate to others as Christian believers. Here’s what we read in 1 Peter, chapter 3, verse 8:

Sympathize with each other.

The demand is so simple and yet so ever increasingly absent today as we see our society spiral ever further into the sinkhole of self centeredness and personal selfishness. Some of this has unfortunately crept into the church as well, I’m afraid, as the once prevalent “we and us” culture has digressed into an “I and me” motif. This has not only impacted the unity of the church but its ability to properly care for others.

So what’s the way back to where we need to be, to the place where people sincerely and genuinely sympathize with one another?

The answers can be found in Christ Jesus and how He lived in regard to the root definitions of the word “sympathize”. Let’s look at these answers now:

1. To sympathize is to exhibit “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune”, to express one’s “condolences”.

Jesus came down from Heaven, God incarnate, and walked this very earth we walk today. He experienced all the joys and sorrows of life, both His and others, and I can’t remember a single time in the Bible where Jesus didn’t seek to come to the aid of people in their time of need. In those instances, we read how He indeed showed “feelings of pity and sorrow” for another’s misfortune, showing perfect caring and compassion. As His disciples, we need to do likewise.

2. Sympathizing also can reflect an “understanding between people” which can manifest itself “in the form of shared feelings or opinions”. It can be viewed as an “an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other”.

This is a matter of sympathizing with another person’s position in regard to something else. For example, one sinner might sympathize with another who is going a struggle to break the bondage of the transgression. Despite being sinless, Jesus sympathized with the plight of those He came to save, sharing the feeling that sin held the unsaved person captive unless it was broken.

And so He willingly chose to do just that, to offer Himself up on the cross of Calvary so to bear the sins of all mankind and provide a way of deliverance and rescue from eternal damnation in Hell.  

3. Finally, to sympathize is “relating harmoniously to something else”, an “inclination to think or feel alike” out of “emotional or intellectual accord”.

As Christians, we are to find our harmonious relation to Jesus, first and foremost. He is the tie that binds the body of Christ together. Through Him, and through Him alone, believers can truly think and feel alike in a way that honors and glorifies His holy name.

Friends, it’s high time we give heed to these calls of action from the scriptures, exercising unity of mind while being supporting and caring for one another through Jesus, who first showed us what proper, perfect sympathizing looks like.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.