Dorcas

I always so greatly enjoy going to my grandparents' church when I am home visiting. They go to Cornerstone Baptist Church in Allen, TX. It is truly a wonderful church. If you are in the DFW area, I highly recommend it. See cbclucas.org for more information.

I literally always feel as though God is speaking directly to me when I am at this church and I leave feeling convicted, renewed, and purposeful. I can honestly say I do not feel this way when I go to other churches and often leave feeling unchanged and untouched (as bad as that may sound). Cornerstone is one of the few churches left that truly preaches the Word, even the parts we do not want to hear, and does not sugar coat anything. Pastor Jim's goal is not that you leave feeling good about yourself and has even said multiple times that you should not leave church feeling good about yourself, but rather you should leave feeling convicted and ready to change something about yourself. As Christians, we should all always be changing. There is always ways we can make ourselves better. Benjamin Franklin said, "when you are finished changing, you are finished." These are such true words!

This past Sunday, Brother Jim spoke about Dorcas. If you are like me, you had never heard of Dorcas before now. Dorcas can be found in Acts 9:36-42. It is crazy to think that such an amazing woman is only talked about one time in the Bible and in just a few verses. Nonetheless, the verses that talk about Dorcas are very powerful and speak volumes as to who she was.

Dorcas was actually from Joppa, which is where Jonah was from. Dorcas is unique in the area of her identity. She had two names given to her: Tabitha and Dorcas. Her name meant gazelle. She was known for one thing primarily and that was a needle. She sewed coats and blankets for the widows and the poor. She was truly a selfless woman, known for her charity.

Pastor Jim said that if he could give Dorcas a life verse, it would be Jude 1:22. "And of some have compassion, making a difference…" Read this a second and even a third time if you need to! I know that I sure did!

Another thing that Pastor Jim said that really stuck out to me and I have been repeating over and over in my head since then is, "Compassion not only has a heart, it also has feet. Talk is cheap." He went on to elaborate that it does not mean anything if all you do is just pray for people or say you are praying for someone, but do not actually ever do anything to help them. If you pray for the poor, but let them starve, you are a hypocrite. Now, this is not to say that we should not pray for people or even that when we are unable to help someone that it is pointless to pray for them. Obviously, we should be praying for people and I for one am a firm believer in the power of prayer. However, too often as Christians we loosely throw out the words, "I'll pray for you" or "I am praying for you", when in reality we could do so much more to help that person. I have tried to make a conscious effort, in fact, of NOT saying I am praying for someone unless I know for one hundred percent that I will go home and be consistently praying for them. This may strike some as odd, but if you think about it, it really is not good to say we are praying for someone if we are not really going to… Even if we have good intentions and think we are going to, if we go home and just get back to our daily grind and forget about them, we should have never said we were going to in the first place. I know for me personally, by making a conscious effort to not say that unless I really mean it, I am finding myself praying more for those few people who I do go ahead and say that to, because I am holding myself accountable to keep my word and follow through and pray fervently for that person.

Back on track to Dorcas…

One of the last things Pastor Jim said was noteworthy of Dorcas in those few verses was her adversity. Verse 37 says that she got sick and died. Why would the story of such an amazing, selfless, Proverbs 31 woman end in sickness and death? Shouldn't she surely have been exempt from sickness in her final days? Was she not worthy of more in the end? The answer is sickness is not a punishment; God does not only allow the evil people in the world to get sick and the good and righteous people get to avoid sickness. In fact, God does not even cause sickness to begin with. It is so easy to get mad at God and blame Him when a loved one gets sick and that sickness takes them from us, but the reality is that God is not to blame. After Adam and Eve sinned and the fall of man occurred, we all lost any immunity we had to sickness.

Verses 37 and 42 explain that Dorcas' sickness was permitted and profitable. I want to share verse 42 specifically with you. "And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord." Yes, you read that right; many came to believe in the Lord as a result of Dorcas' death. She did not only glorify God in her life, but also in her death as well. Brother Jim brought up my grandmother at this point in the sermon, as she was a lot like Dorcas. She did good all the days of her life and led hundreds of people to the Lord. Even in her final days here on Earth at the hospital, she led a couple of nurses to the Lord. At her funeral, over 15 people were saved. One of the last things she said to Brother Jim at the hospital too was that she wanted her funeral to be centered around leading people to the Lord. She would have been so happy and pleased to know that her death saved at least fifteen souls from an eternity in hell.

Dorcas brought God glory and honor all throughout her life. She did not do things for herself, but rather dedicated her life to serving others. She left this world still honoring God and bringing people to Him. What an amazing woman! What are all of us doing for God on a daily basis? Are we living for ourselves or are we serving others? If we died today, would souls be won for Christ as a result of our death? Would our eulogy be so powerful that lost souls would see the light of Christ when hearing it? These are some of the things that I left church Sunday thinking about.

The truth is, most of us can not say these same things about ourselves, but that's the beauty of God's grace- it is not too late to change that! We can start right here, right now, making these changes. When you are cooking dinner tonight, make a little extra and take a plate or a bowl to an older couple or a widow or widower on your street. It is the simple things like that that make a difference! It is so easy to think that you are not able or you are too busy to really make a difference like Dorcas did, but the truth is, it really isn't! The enemy wants you to think that and wants to keep you from glorifying God in your everyday life, but every single one of us can do small things every day to bring Him Glory! The sooner we make it a habit, the easier it will be to stay consistent.

Philippians 1:12 says, "But I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel;".