If you think of yourself as a nobody, that's alright, so were the apostles. When they wrote their letters to the churches they had no idea they would go any further than the particular gatherings to which they were sent.
God never told them that their writings would be saved in the Holy Word of God, going down through history 2000 years. I am sure it didn't cross their minds that someone in 2017 sitting at a machine called a computer could call up their words on hundreds of places on something called the internet.
If we are amazed that we can read the words of someone in nearly every language of the world in a book that was preserved all this time, how much more astonished we should be that we can do this on a machine that reaches the entire world in seconds, nearly instantly.
The apostles didn't have the ability to make copies of what they wrote, they depended on God to get that one letter to the church for which it was written, that's all they knew about where their writings would end up. But we can copy and send letters to every corner of this globe without leaving our homes.
To recap:
Later others copied those letters, preserved them, then they were protected in caves, copied again into hundreds of languages to be given out in books all over the world, now we have the internet, these same letters can reach the other side of the world instantly, waiting in someone's cyber mailbox until they sit down at their computers to call up their mail.
I don't know about you but this makes me excited about all the things the Lord has in store for us that we don't know about, what is coming is even greater than anything we have experienced thus far.
Have faith, what we cannot see is better yet!
Proverbs 3:5-6
"5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight."
Psalm 118:8
"It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man."
Romans 15:13
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope."
Many if not most people these days are "easily offended", it is rampant, everything is based on "feelings" instead of rational reasoning.
2 Timothy 3:1-3
1 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these."
God does not tell us to remain with these people just in case we can tell them something that will help them. Rather, He tells us to remove ourselves, they are not open to truth.
Let's remember that if our prayers are answered and the 2 Timothy 3 types have been changed by Christ into a born again state, God will tell us and they will know where to find us.
There is a psychological teaching going around, has been for years, that teaches if someone is mean, someone must have hurt them or they had a bad experience in their life.
Mean people say hurtful things. It is psychology and wrong that people only lash out because they are hurting. God never said we are given a pass for our past or how people treat us. He told us to bless those who curse us.
Evil people should be confronted, the reason we have more evil than ever before in our culture is because we showed grace to the wicked man while badgering the victim to forgive. The wicked man in our culture believes we are obligated to forgive him, that's why he keeps doing the same wicked things over and over again without remorse. Even if he gets worse because he is confronted, it only means that his heart has not been broken over his sinfulness.
Our culture has lied to us, pretending that no one is truly evil and anyone who calls them out on their mean behavior is the evil one. But notice something, they are willing to tolerate the evil in someone who is truly evil, but not willing to tolerate anyone who calls out the evil one.
Isaiah 26:10 "10 Though the wicked is shown favor, He does not learn righteousness; He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness, And does not perceive the majesty of the LORD."
Those who do mean things are showing their heart of contempt and need to be shown that heart. We don' automatically hurt others because we have been hurt. Often a humble loving person are better with others because we don't want to hurt others the way we have been hurt.
How we respond to being hurt reveals our heart, it does not shape it.
A kind and loving person will respond in shame when told they are sinning, or if they have been accused and are not sinning, they will not respond in rage, but rather want to discuss it to clear things up.
An evil heart refuses to discuss anything, they accuse, demean, mock and rage without any concern whatever that anything is cleared up. Being seen as "winning" is more important to the evil heart than truth, in fact these people have an hatred against the truth because it usually exposes their sinfulness.
John 3:20
"Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed."
