Month: June 2015

The world of fallen men does not honor God. Millions call themselves by His name, it is true, and pay some token respect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is really honored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on the question of who or what is above, and his true position will be exposed. Let him be forced into making a choice between God and money, between God and men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and human love, and God will take second place every time. Those other things will be exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in the choices he makes day after day throughout his life.
–A. W. Tozer

As you take the simple test, who or what comes out on top?
In each of his “choice between” questions above…
God and money
God and praise of men
God and personal ambition
God and pleasing self
God and human relationships
…does God take first place or second or third or…?

The proof of your love and honor for God yesterday was found in the choices you made yesterday.
Do any of your previous choices need to be adjusted as you begin today?

Another excellent 500-year-old prayer for us to pray today:
Father God, The greatest vanity is the evil plague of empty self-glory, because it draws one away from true glory and robs one of heavenly grace. For when a man is pleased with himself he displeases You, when he pants after human praise he is deprived of true virtue. But it is true glory and holy exultation to glory in You and not in self, to rejoice in Your name rather than in one’s own virtue, and not to delight in any creature except for Your sake.
Let Your name, not mine, be praised.
Let Your work, not mine, be magnified.
Let Your holy name be blessed, but let no human praise be given to me.
You are my glory. You are the joy of my heart.
In You I will glory and rejoice all the day, and for myself I will glory in nothing but my infirmities.
–Thomas à Kempis

Amen. May this be my heart’s cry today.

There are many difficult societal issues that Christians must confront and find a way to navigate through. And we need strong family values to help our family members walk through the “minefield” without significant damage. But our families and our society needs more from us:

The issues that confront Christians in a secular society must be faced and addressed and legislated, and a democracy gives Christians every right to express themselves. But we dare not invest so much in the kingdom of this world that we neglect our main task of introducing people to a different kind of kingdom, one based solely on God’s grace and forgiveness. Passing laws to enforce morality serves a necessary function, to dam up evil, but it never solves human problems. If a century from now all that historians can say about evangelicals of the 1990s is that they stood for family values, then we will have failed the mission Jesus gave us to accomplish: to communicate God’s reconciling love to sinners.
–Philip Yancey

May we not fail in the mission He gave us!
May we go beyond politics and laws and family values… into the world with the message of the love of Jesus.

I said to the man at the Gate of the Year: “Give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown.”
He said to me: “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand in the hand of God, and it shall be to you better than the light, and safer than the known.”
— Minnie Louise Haskins

Amen.
I love this quote!
May we place our hands in the mighty hands of God and allow Him to guide us wherever He wants us to go.

(And for those of you who worked in our FBC VBS this year – it sounds a bit like our theme, doesn’t it: Journey off the Map: Though the way is unknown to us; It is known to Him! His voice will be behind us telling us the way to go – and that will be better than any other light and safer than any other way!)

Power, no matter how well-intentioned, tends to cause suffering.
Love, being vulnerable, absorbs it.
In a point of convergence on a hill called Calvary, God renounced the one for the sake of the other.
–Philip Yancey

If Jesus saw the necessity of “emptying Himself” and renouncing power to show His vulnerable love that absorbs our suffering, then I should attempt to do the same.

But it sure is hard to do.

“Father, help me to be vulnerable and loving towards others, so that I can work to absorb suffering, rather than inflict it through any use of power.”