One of our new members here at NHCOC wrote this the other day, and I asked him if I could share it with our church family. So, it’s here in a Daily Bread. Also, if you have not met Brandon McCorkle and his sweet wife Victoria, then you need to. You will be blessed. (See their picture below).
Random thing that I feel God has placed in my heart that I want to share with y’all:
Recently, some of my friends and I did a bible study of the book of Revelation and in Chapter 2-3 a certain pattern began to emerge. Jesus told the author, John, to write 7 letters to the 7 churches and after each short letter, it would end with “let anyone who has an ear hear what the spirit says to the churches(KJV).
When I was younger, I had no idea what that meant but now I have an idea. For anyone who has more than one child or has ever babysat two or more children at a time, there may have come a time when you told one child not to do something and you want both children not to do it (you may have only told one child because they were the only one doing wrong at the time). Instead of waiting for the second child to do wrong and correcting them then, you might tell the second child, something like “did you hear what I just told them? Same rule applies to you”. We say that so we won’t have to repeat ourselves later and I believe that is what Jesus means in those passages,
When He tells one of the seven churches not to forget their first love, He is telling us “did you hear what I just told them? Same rule applies to you…. When Jesus tells one of the seven churches: Heaven is on the line here, He is telling us, “did you hear what I just told them? Same rule applies to you”. Below is a list of some paraphrases of the things that was told to the seven churches that we should hear as well
1. Fear not
2. Hold on tight to the word
3. Don’t accept teachings that are not from God
4. Choose a side (don’t be lukewarm)
5. Don’t be conceited.
~ Brandon McCorkle
Thank you, Brandon, for these words. What a blessing you are. He who has an ear…
~ Alex