Jayme and Mandy Jackson, church planters to South Louisiana, and their four children, Larkin, Braxton, Ethan, and Morgan were guests at Bethany Baptist Church, Sunday.
Jayme Jackson was raised in Alabama and has pastored in Natchez, Mississippi, Wichita, Kansas, and worked on church staffs at various other places. He made a fairly recent visit to New Orleans and saw that there are many needs there. His burden is for the St. Bernard parish where there is a population of about 40,000 compared to the 80,000 population prior to the disastrous hurricane, Katrina.
Jayme showed pictures of the school buses lined up in neat rows not used that could have been used to provide a way of escape for many of the people who died in Katrina. It is sad to think that people perished while those buses just sat there.
It is just as sad to see thousands in America perishing in sin not knowing that there is a way of escape. People die everyday of drug use, violence, and disease without ever realizing that salvation is a free gift.
In the meantime, Christians, who could be going out to reach the really poor and sometimes unlovable persons, are more concerned with having more money, better clothes, and a bigger house. A man like Peter who once said, “silver and gold have I none,” would not be counted among America’s most successful men. Neither would John the Baptist who wore camels hair and dined on locusts or Jesus who never had a house of his own. But in God’s eyes these men were successful.
If we would desire to be successful in God’s eyes we must first of all be saved. Nothing else will matter when we come down to the end of this life. Nothing that we bring as offering to the Lord will earn us that salvation. It is only by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ that we can be cleansed of the deadly toxin of sin.
If we would desire to be successful in God’s eyes we need to make it our goal to know and serve him better. We who are members of the body of Christ have talents and gifts with which to serve God. What ever the gift, it should be used to bring glory to God and not to ourselves.
We need to have courage to share the name of Jesus Christ in a world where true Christianity is not popular. Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to escape an eternity in hell, but few people really want to hear that. Our job, if we want to see people rescued from something even worse than Katrina, is to take the gospel to them. Our job is to see that the next generation has a chance to hear the message of salvation.
