Matthew Henry John Bartlett

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Tuesday 27 September, 02005

by Matthew Bartlett @ 11:01 pm

Tonight because of Charles Ringma’s talk at Central Baptist where I saw none of you I was thinking: if a middle-class Christian like myself gives up ministering from a position of strength, providing services as from afar, from away up, down to the poor, the less fortunate, the lowly, and instead gives up what wealth, status and influence he has and identifies with the poor in their poverty, sharing that pain on the level, seeking justice because injustice would be a lived reality, not a word on TV, then he would find out whether the holy spirit is in fact there with him, whether Jesus’ name is in fact powerful – when stripped of all he now relies on, his only strength and advantage would be that name.

13 responses to “”

  1. Thanks for the article Baus, I’ll read it now. My first thought though is that the first principle might be Staying About Where One Finds Oneself.

  2. Aaron says:

    Like Moses, Matt. Exactly like him.

  3. Tim says:

    I understand, Aaron. I understand.

  4. Aaron says:

    Hebrews 11:24-28

    By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.

    Imagine the temptation of Moses to use the power and prestige of his position as a royal prince to help Israel, rather than identifying with them in their slavery.

  5. Yeah, but I dunno if that’s the kind of story that a ‘principle’ can be extracted from. He also went on a decades-long pilgrimmage into the desert during which I expect the Israelites were still having a pretty rought time, unidentified-with.

  6. Aaron says:

    Principle-who-cares. I was just saying that to identify with the poor (after whatever time doing whatever) is like Moses. Because he did, too.

    And presumably he had the option (according to Hebrews, anyway) of doing otherwise.

  7. dennis bartlett says:

    he was also a murderer

  8. Matthew Baird says:

    One man’s murder is another man’s unlawfully taking a person’s life. Why quibble?

  9. Aaron says:

    Which just goes to show, Dennis, how God uses for noble purposes the most unlikely of vessels, and afterwards praises them to bits.

    Rather humbling, that.

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