When Jesus cast the demons out of a person and they went into the swine and they were destroyed, the men were upset and the people wanted Jesus to leave. Why were they upset? They placed PROFIT before a PERSON. -{Read Mark 5:1-20}
What you live for is revealed in who or what you value most? Profit or the souls of people.
Jesus said He had to go through Samaria. Why? for one woman’s soul and He changed her eternal destiny.-{Read John 4}.
Philip went to the desert for one soul and his life was changed and we read everywhere Philip went he kept preaching Jesus. It had nothing to do with his location but his vocation- wherever he was to preach Jesus Christ. -{Read Acts 8:26-40}. Paul and Silas were put in a prison because they helped someone for Christ sake and again the owners of the fortune teller girl who was delivered, were so enraged they had Paul and Silas put in prison. The owners put Profit before a Person. Were Paul and Silas bitter? No. They were singing the praises of God and the prisoners were listening, when an earth quake hit and all the prison doors were flung oven. Surely this was their chance to escape. But they were not thinking of themselves but the soul of the Suicidal Jailer who asked what he must of to be saved. He and his family called to the LORD and were saved! -{Read Acts 16:16-40}
Paul was not concerned with Self-Protection, but Christ Exaltation and the Liberation of a Soul in the circumstances he found himself in!
Many years ago I was sharing on the verse, “For me to Live Is Christ …”{Philippians 1:21}, And I had said, if you were to take out the word “Christ,” and replace it with what you live for, what would the sentence say about you? “For me to live is _____” A man put his hand in his pocket and pulled out some cash and said that this is what he lived for! Life for him was money! At a later time I was speaking in another location and that same man came to me later to share about one of his children who had been in trouble, and he was heart broken and what he had lived for could not help them. I do appreciate his honesty… I hope if he is still alive his priorities and heart ha changed that he can say with Paul ,“For me to LIVE IS CHRIST… and to die is gain.” For death is only gain for those who had lived for Christ. For death is gain because it means being with him. The sad thing to live for money upon death you are separated from it- eternally so in Hell! Money is not evil, it is neutral, it is our attitude to it that determines do we live for it or do we use it to live. Does it control us or do we control it? Because one will be occupied with Profit over people. For those whose life is Christ.., Live for People as the priority over Profit!
“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”- {Matthew 6:21}