Encouraged by the Mutual Faith

At the end of my last article about not being ashamed to share your experiences about the power of God working in your life (see also: The Burden of the LORD), I related a conversation that I'd had with another counselor at Camp Woodmen where I did precisely what I've been advocating in these last two articles. I left out an important part of the story, although I alluded to it vaguely with the following comment:

God meant for us to share these stories with each other so that we can encourage each other and mutually strengthen one another's faith.

The purpose of all of this openness and sharing that I'm so adamantly promoting is not that I feel that I have some great story that everyone needs to hear. Rather, the point is that you and I, and every member of God's church, have experiences that can help us to better understand the power of God, to see His transformational work in our own lives, and to encourage each other by seeing that work in action. This is the true power and purpose of what we call "fellowship," and one of the primary reasons for which God appointed a holy convocation, a gathering, every 7th day.

Not Ashamed

My last post about "The Burden of the LORD" was, in my opinion, a fairly abstract and vague expression of the feelings and experiences that I've had since Camp Woodmen. One of the many points made in that article that I didn't take the time to elaborate on was the importance of sharing the work of God in your life with others, as I wrote:

Whenever God gives you something useful to share with someone, you should say it... it may be a story of something that happened in your life that speaks to an issue someone is having... it may be sharing how God supplied your needs or worked in your life; it may be a good work that you have done by faith and the benefit that it brought to your life or someone else's; it may be a time when you stood up for something; it may be a time when you didn't stand up for something when you should have. Whatever the case, I found myself, as a counselor, very naturally doing something that was unnatural for me: I was telling people exactly what was in my heart if I had anything at all in mind that I knew would be profitable for them to hear.

A few days after camp ended, in the midst of this epiphany about the "burden of the LORD," I came across something that Paul wrote which really hit me in a new way:

Romans 1:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."

Why would anyone be ashamed of the gospel? This is something that I didn't even know I struggled with - one more heavy burden that I had put on myself that God was finally lifting.

The Burden of the LORD

I was, for the first time, a counselor at Camp Woodmen this year, and the experience has fostered some truly incredible changes in my attitude and behavior in the weeks since. One of the many great lessons for me was encouragement - about which I have so much more to say at some point - but encouragement also indirectly led me to what I now write about. After serving as a counselor for 7 days and putting every ounce of energy I could muster into maintaining the best and highest quality experience for each of my campers, I had done a lot of encouraging and had really seen the incredible power of it! But by the end of that time, I had extrapolated an even greater principle, of which encouragement is just a sub-heading.

This year at camp, I had something of an epiphany: I realized that I had many important things to say that God has wanted me to say for a long time. In particular, I had important things to say to the people who mean the most to me. How much I loved them and how much I appreciate the things they've done for me. How one person's example of faith had impacted me. How much I missed someone, and how I have failed them by not telling them this when they needed to hear it, but also how I'm ready to do better. How I've wanted to tell them this all along and even seriously thought about saying it before, but simply let those moments pass by unacknowledged. I came to refer to this need to tell these people these things as "the burden of the LORD," and I've spent a lot of time meditating on the gravity of that phrase.

Firstfruits and Pentecost: Foreshadow of Deliverance

I really did intend to have this article written around Pentecost, especially since this is the message that I gave as a sermonette on Pentecost! But now, as I find so many other articles begging to be written in my mind, it's time that I eat my vegetables first and finish this up. As I pointed out in the first part of this series on firstfruits, the firstfruits were commanded to be brought before God at two different times: once on the Feast of Firstfruits and then again on the Feast of Weeks (i.e., Pentecost). The Feast of Firstfruits occurs during the Days of Unleavened Bread, the primary theme of which is deliverance from sin, just as God historically had delivered Israel from Egypt during those days. Perhaps it should not be surprising then that the offering of firstfruits, which occurred both on the Feast of Firstfruits and on Pentecost, was also a reminder of God's deliverance:

Deuteronomy 26:2-10
“You shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground... and say before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers... So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand... and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me.’

While the message of deliverance in the firstfruits may be clear for the Feast of Firstfruits (during the Days of Unleavened Bread), how does this deliverance factor into the message of the Day of Pentecost as we understand it in the New Covenant? In this article, I'll examine the link between the Feast of Firstfruits, the Day of Pentecost, and the theme of deliverance that unifies their incredible message!