Month: March 2015

The Bible is wrought with examples of God doing things for His own glory. Refining our hearts is no exception: “I have refined you in the furnace of suffering, . . . yes, for My own sake!” (Isa. 48:10-11). He goes on to say that He doesn’t want His reputation tarnished by idols; He refuses to let the recognition due to Him to go to them. It was true in how He dealt with Israel, and it is true in how He deals with us. God more often allows us to suffer to refine our own hearts and purge us from idols than to prepare us for “greatness.”
–Anonymous, from Embracing Obscurity

So often we are hoping that we will achieve greatness. We want to be put on the pedestal. We look at God’s Word and read about His plans for us with the hope that He plans that we will have fame, fortune, and glory. But God is most concerned about His glory. He wants others to see His greatness, because only He can provide them salvation and abundant life. And so when we suffer, it might not be because He is soon going to take us to greatness. It might simply be for us to realize His greatness. Let us continue to consider how great He is, instead of focusing on how great we hope we will become.

The tragedy is that our eternal welfare depends upon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear.
–A. W. Tozer

It takes effort to listen to God. It is not our natural tendency. But if we will take the time and make the effort to retrain our ears, then we will hear the marvelous truths of salvation and discover the secrets of having an abundant life in Him.

Who will you listen to today?

Paul had one great passion in his life – to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified. What we are willing to die for shows our belief, but what we are willing to live for and suffer for shows our radical commitment to our beliefs.
–John Piper

Living a life that is daily crucified to Christ is harder than physically dying for Him. But doing so shows your radical commitment to His Lordship.

I would die for Jesus before I would renounce Him, certainly. But the more important question is whether or not I will live for Him.

Greatness defined:
You can gauge the size of a ship that has passed out of sight by the huge wake it leaves behind.
–Philip Yancey

In line with this idea, Yancey provides this quote from H. G. Wells:
“More than 1900 years later, a historian like myself, who doesn’t even call himself a Christian, finds the picture centering irresistibly around the life and character of this most significant man…. The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is ‘What did he leave to grow?’ Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with a vigor that persisted after him? By this test Jesus stands first.”

Have you considered the greatness of Jesus?
Have you allowed the huge wake He left behind to impact your life?

The old man, alas, yet lives within me. He has not yet been entirely crucified; he is not yet entirely dead. He still lusts strongly against the spirit, and he will not leave the kingdom of my soul in peace. But You, Who can command the power of the sea and calm the tumult of its waves, arise and help me.
–Thomas à Kempis

Amen. God help me to crucify my sinful thoughts, attitudes, actions, and words.