DISCRIMINATION

I WAS amazed at some of the testimonies I heard as I participated in the funeral of Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, especially one testimony by one of the black players. This player said that he would have come even if he had not been asked to speak. He went on to explain how, during the sixties when society was still very racially divided, he always knew that when he came to the Cowboys’ football camp, this coach would treat him fairly. One African-American player after another came up and said that they knew Landry to be a fair man at a time when the culture was unrighteous. What did this man have to show for it? Twenty years of winning and going to heaven with a good name. He didn’t let what was happening in society mess with his team. Too many of us let folks on the outside affect how we feel in our hearts and therefore we break up our winning season for the kingdom of God.216

[Race Relations; Kingdom of God]

Acts 17:26; Rom. 12:2; Gal. 3:28

ONE of the least-thanked groups in our society is the people who empty the garbage. It’s not what you would call a high-class job. However, in New York a couple of years ago, the garbagemen went on strike. All of a sudden, these typically underrated people became the most significant people in the city because the whole place was stinking.

If you let a couple of weeks go by and your garbage doesn’t get picked up, all of a sudden, the nobodies become somebodies. God has said that He makes the nobodies of this world the somebodies, and He measures our significance by how we treat them. It is important to make time in your schedule for people rejected by society.217

[Servanthood]

Matt. 25:31–46; James 1:27

MANY people discriminate in the area of education. Now, let me explain something to the “edu-ma-cated.” Whether you have a PhD or a GED, you have come into the kingdom through the same door. God did not look at your resume before He brought you into the kingdom. He didn’t see whether you had a BS, MBA, or PhD. He wanted to give everybody in here a BA—born again.

Praise God if you got to go to school on a government grant. Praise God if your parents could pay for it. Praise God if you had to work like a dog to get it, and praise God for the person who had the tenacity to go back after dropping out. But our education or lack of it doesn’t make us any better or worse in God’s sight.218

Acts 10:34; Gal. 2:6