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BRAVER THAN LIONS
Sam Stringer
Jan 3, 2025
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and
not of us.
2 Corinthians 4:7
Have you ever hidden something valuable in a place that’s easily overlooked? My mind goes back to the
many ways we hid keys to our house growing up, often in places that were inconspicuous but easily
memorable. People hide things of value all of the time in items or places that are deeply undervalued for
preservation’s sake—at least they did especially in Bible times. A clay pot was very insignificant in New
Testament era culture, but it was also a great place to put something valuable since it was easily
overlooked. Today, we use banks and safety deposit boxes, in-home safes and such, but when someone
had something worth much too them before these modern inventions, they hid their stuff in jars or even in
fields (think of Jesus’s story of the hidden treasure found in a field in Matt. 13:44).
We live in times of cancel culture. I don’t need to go into the ways this happens, but it does happen. I
would submit to you that this mentality is not new, because it existed very much in Bible times. Think
about this: Jesus was hard for a lot of people to accept. You know I read a few years ago that based upon
the people of his area at the time, some scholars believed he may have only been 5’2” or so. Can you
imagine? His own humanity was too much for people to accept Him as being the Lord of the universe, if
for no other reason than He looked like the other humans. His teachings were too revolutionary to the
legalistic Pharisaic stuff of the day, and this canceled him. He turned five loaves of bread and two fish into
a ton of food to feeds well over 5,000 people only to be followed the next day and to then pivot and say,
“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no
life in you.” (Jn. 6:53 NKJ) What happened? Confusion, frustration, and a mass exodus to the point where
Jesus turned to his disciples and asked, “Do you also want to go away?” (Jn. 6:67) Lest we forget, His
own crucifixion was an absolute mockery in the ancient world: while some believed, there were many who
thought that the idea of a crucified Lord was absolutely idiotic. Either Jesus comes in power and puts
every social issue in order, or he’s not the Messiah; that was the thinking. You see, the veil of weakness,
of being misunderstood, of being held to certain images that don’t add up and so forth are all ways in
which there was a filtration of the crowds. So, too, for all of us. I’m probably too religious to some of my
friends on Facebook and not enough to others; it happens. I always throw people off as “the Baptist
pastor who plays electric guitars.” Who knows? Maybe you stopped reading this devo after that sentence
yourself. I like to think it has a “John the Baptist in the wilderness preaching Christ while eating locusts
and honey and wearing camel hair and a leather belt” kind of vibe, but that’s just me…
Ponder this today: over what could someone cancel you? Aside from being a sinner who sins, what could
they decide that makes you invalidated to them? Play along with me: too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short,
your ethnicity, your education, your background, your place of origin, too smart or too uneducated, too
rich, too poor, too happy or too sad, too successful or too much of a failure, too talkative or not outspoken
enough, too experienced or too inexperienced, too conservative or too liberal (both have a subjective
definition to everyone), too young or too old, too vulnerable or too reserved, too much whatever. Every
one of us has reasons to someone else as to why they don’t like us, don’t want to hear us, don’t think
they should listen to us, don’t have the time of day for us. All of this human stuff about us narrows the
audience, always. In my experience, every time I went to a new church in a new pastorate, day one was
fine, but it wasn’t long before there were people disagreeing, leaving, etc. and often over very small things
that they refused to even talk about.
There is no person serving Christ today, blood-bought and loved by God, that will not come as some form
of earthen vessel carrying a spiritual treasure within. God uses that very issue people have with “throwing
the baby out with the bathwater” to sort out the people we’re supposed to help from the people we aren’t.
I used to try so hard to contort myself to make every person like me, listen to me, approve me, and yet I
failed to understand that there’s no such thing as everyone agreeing on something, or someone for that
matter. I could ask all of you reading who has the best pizza out there and it wouldn’t be the same
answer; that’s because of the subjective nature of people. I could ask the very same question a year from
now and the answers I got today might not be the same ones then, because people change, too.
The sinful world had no place for Jesus but a cross and a tomb; He rose again, but many at the time
would never oblige such a notion. They wanted Him gone, and His followers, too. God has a place for
every one of His children, but the pushbacks and nitpicking sometimes get to us so much that we lose our
bravery to serve because of the voices that defame us and invalidate not only what we’re doing to serve God today, but maybe everything we’ve done in serving Him up to this point.
God uses imperfect earthen vessels every day to accomplish His perfect plans; we need to follow Him in
faith instead of trying to be what each person thinks we should be if we’re going to serve Him well. Why?
So that the excellence of the power of the message may be of God and not of us. He doesn’t want people
to confuse why they responded to His working, as though it was someone’s suave words and shiny
charm; He wants it to be from Him. He may call some pretty banged up social outcasts at times to be
some of the great, if not greatest, carriers of His light. Our peculiarities open doors with some people and
shut doors with others. If God uses us, it’s a testimony to His goodness and not our worthiness to be
used.
God knows who He is tapping on the shoulder when He asks each of us to serve Him; the best response
we can give is to simply obey. Be humble with your humanity as you recognize that God can do great
things through broken people redeemed by His grace. Accept that the ministry He has for you, in
whatever capacity, is going to have people that gravitate to it and who move away from it. Be faithful to
Him, it’s the best any of us can do. Seriously.
Sam Stringer
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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