Wednesday, October 21, 2015

The Significance Of You Being Satisfied With Insignificance




But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith… —Jude 20

“Most of us develop our Christianity along the lines of our own nature, not along the lines of God’s nature. […] Discipleship is built entirely on the supernatural grace of God. […] it [requires] the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God— but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people— and this is not learned in five minutes.” CHAMBERS

Bringing glory to God by living the ordinary life.  Is that something that you see as somehow less spiritual than the person who goes to a distant land to face adversity and hardship in his service to the Lord?  It is not a matter of “what” you do that makes something spiritually significant.  It is a matter of how and why you do it.  Is God at the center of whatever you are doing.  When I attended my 20th class reunion, some years ago, I was chatting with a high school buddy.  Vocation became the subject of discussion, as it inevitably does with guys.  When he discovered what I was doing, a major in the Army who flies helicopters, he told me what he did, working for Caterpillar Tractor, in an apologetic way. Like somehow he was less of a man because of what I did compared to what he did. Frankly that irritated me a little so I asked him a few questions. Are you feeding your family?  Are they healthy? Are they happy? Do you have a house to live in?  Then I said, “Don’t apologize for being responsible in the way you take care of your family.”   We do the same things as Christians.  Our commonality is the need to walk in obedience to God, no matter what He might call us to.  If you compare yourself to other Christians, you are self-focused .. not Christ-focused.  So stop it and focus on walking in obedience and bringing glory to Him, no matter what God puts your hand to, no matter where you are. ELGIN

(1 Corinthians 12: 12-15,18-22,27)  “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. […] But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”  On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, […] Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)

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