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Rahab The Heroine
by Cate Russell-Cole Even though Rahab had probably done everything wrong in her life, it only took one act of something right to have her immortalised in the Bible has a heroine. It is an excellent illustration of the bottom line of Christianity, the only thing that really matters is that we choose God over everything else, and thus we are saved. Rahab was a prostitute. She was the lowest form of mankind in the eyes of the religious. Through her "contacts" she heard about the crossing of the Red Sea and the other miraculous acts God had performed for the Israelites. She knew the people were frightened of the children of Israel, and were anxious about their impending attack. Rahab wisely chose sides, she wanted to be under the greater more powerful God, not just out of fear for her life. As the Word says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Rahab sheltered Israel's spies in return for her and her families protection when they attacked Jericho. Maybe this to her was a small favour, something that she had done for others in the past. Rahab knew how to survive, but obviously had a soft heart as she did not forget her family, wanting their protection from the spies. She was not like one of the young girls who flee to Kings Cross cutting off all family ties out of hurt and bitterness. How she wound up in such a disreputable occupation is a mystery, but under it all, I believe she would have been a decent person. Her heart was soft enough to accept God rather than laugh at what must have come across as some tall stories. She was open enough to believe and receive God's salvation into her life. The messages you could glean from Rahab are undoubtedly numerous. God siding with the underdog, and not too proud to use a harlot to accomplish His purposes. She has been given more than "fifteen minutes of fame." Her acts have been reported consistently over several thousand years. There is no rock star or movie celebrity who will be able to claim that. What I have learnt from Rahab is that works don't matter. We come into the kingdom with a heart's desire to serve God to the utmost, and that is a wonderful attitude. Without our desire to serve, there would be no churches, no outreach, no missions into other countries and our own communities. The bottom line however, is our choice of following God. Our choice to stay out of astrology, drinking, illicit sex, materialism, idolatry, lying, cheating and the many other forms of self-destruction and worldliness that are ours for the taking in this society. To God, it doesn't matter in the end, say at the point of death, how much we have done, how adequate or inadequate we think we have been for the kingdom, or what we have left undone. What really matters is that we have chosen Him above all else. That is not only our passport into heaven, but our passport into abundant life rather than a life of bondage, over-serving God to the detriment of ourselves and our families. We can be Mary or Martha working overtime to be acceptable, feeling the pressure to do as much as everyone else is, or we can sit at His feet and be awestruck and in an intimate relationship with Him, knowing who our Father is, where our hope is, and being blessed as we look back and praising Him for the troubles He has bought us out from. This article by Cate Russell-Cole is under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) Written in Australian English. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |