Growing up in the church, there were certain things that I respected to the point of enshrining them; things not to be touched or wrinkled or leaned upon. At one church, I was told not to stand in the pulpit unless I was preaching. So many things have changed and it is good because the freedom we have in Christ allows so much more than I knew as a child.
One item that I held almost to the point of idolatry was my Bible. Of course we should always revere the Bible because it is God’s Word to us. We have a loving Father who wants us to know the best way to live, to maximize our efforts, not to be restrained because He wants to rule over us. I just finished cleaning my Bible. You may say, “You did what?” That’s right, I had to clean by Bible. You see, my Bible is not on a table in the foyer to be worshiped. It is not hidden on the bookshelf to be protected. No, my Bible is everywhere in the house. You can find it in the kitchen, you can find it on my TV tray, you may even find it in the bathroom. Sometimes you will see a drop of water on it or maybe even a crumb from a sandwich. Open it up and there are underlined passages and notes written on the pages. Once I ended up cleaning drywall mud off of it because I took a break from an odd job to read.
So I want to encourage all those who may read this to engage in the scriptures. Dig deep and dig long to understand how our Father wants you grow in knowledge and truth. And when you get into those words of wisdom from God, you will see how valuable each of our abilities truly are, reach 1 Corinthians 12. You will see how God wants us to include our friends affected by disability and allow them to to minister and not be the object of ministry.
This is what we are teaching, This is what we are encouraging churches around the world to do. This is why Ability Ministry is here. If you will open your hearts, minds and churches to the disability community, you will find that YOU have just become the object of ministry and your life will be changed by the freedom of those we too often see as weak. 1 Corinthians 12:22
