…Strength, inner strength, comes from receiving love as much as it comes from giving it. I think apart from the idea that I am a sinner and God forgives me, this is the greatest lesson I have ever learned. When you get it, it changes you. My friend Julie from Seattle told me that the main prayer she prays for her husband is that he will be able to receive love. And this is the prayer I pray for all my friends because it is the key to happiness. God’s love will never change us if we don’t accept it.
–Donald Miller
Many of us like to give but have a hard time receiving. We like being known as givers but haven’t learned to graciously accept. It takes humility to graciously receive. I pray that God will help me learn to receive love from Him and from others.
“God did not abolish the fact of evil: He transformed it,” wrote Dorothy Sayers. “He did not stop the crucifixion; He rose from the dead.” The hero bore all consequences, yet somehow triumphed.
–Philip Yancey
True then are these two sayings: Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works. Bad works do not make a bad man, but a bad man does bad works. Thus it is always necessary that the substance or person should be good before any good works can be done, and that good works should follow and proceed from a good person.
–Martin Luther
What kind of person am I?
What kind of person are you?
“Getting Into A Muddle”
by brian rushing photo source: whoisbillbailey.info/picture-good-luck/
Many of us often wonder: “How in the world has this world gotten in such a mess?”
We might also ask: “How in the world has my family gotten into such a mess?”
And even more personally, at some point we will probably all ask: “How has my personal life gotten into such a mess?” I like the way J. I. Packer asks it: “How on earth have people got into such a muddle?”
His answer?
One is that people have gotten into the practice of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from his own Word; we have to try to help them unlearn the pride and, in some cases, the misconceptions about Scripture which gave rise to this attitude and to base their convictions henceforth not on what they feel but on what the Bible says.
A second answer is that modern people think of all religions as equal and equivalent—they draw their ideas about God from pagan as well as Christian sources; we have to try to show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s last word to man.
A third answer is that people have ceased to recognize the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; it is our task to try to introduce people to this fact about themselves and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the word of Christ.
Do you see yourself holding to any of these misconceptions? Have you ever found yourself in a muddle?
Too often we want to “feel” that God should be a certain way, when the Bible presents Him in another light. Too often we want to think that there are many ways to God, when the Bible is clear that Jesus is the only Way. And too often we want to think that we are good enough on our own, when the Bible tells us that our righteousness is worthless in God’s eyes and that we must take the righteousness of Jesus to be made holy.
To get out of our mess… our muddle… we have to decide to “grow up” and look at things from God’s perspective, instead of demanding that things always be our way.
(Quotes in today’s post are from Knowing God by J. I. Packer)
Remember the story where we encounter obscurity as a young boy brings Jesus two fish and five loaves of bread to help feed the group of more than 5000 people:
…in none of the Gospels are We even given his name, and he is never mentioned again. Have you ever been asked in one of those small group ice-breaker questions, “What Bible story character would you like to be?” Would this be yours? Would you want to be “the young boy”? Would you be Willing to remain nameless, offering up your meager portion to your Savior, with no promise of return or guarantee of notoriety, but in complete obedience allow God to work His magic through your small “lunch”? That’s what embracing obscurity is all about: Being content with being “relatively unknown” so that Christ can he made more known. Temporarily going hungry, so that many more may be filled.
–Anonymous, in Embracing Obscurity
Ugh. My pride.
I don’t know about you, but my pride resists wanting to pick “the young boy” as the Bible character I’d want to be. The unknown, nameless one who offers all he has so that Jesus can be made more known…I mean I’m all for Jesus to be made more known through what I provide, BUT can’t I also be made more known in the process as well? That’s more along the lines of what I usually want. To get the pat on the back and be made known. I need God to keep helping me become a person of true humility this year.
