Sunday, January 24, 2010

Fellowship: Honesty and Humility


As believers, we are challenged to impact the world around us not only in words and actions, but also in character. The world certainly needs some impacting! When we focus on trying to meet those expectations, we fail miserably and even in success, we fret that maybe we weren't successful enough. There never is enough "doing" to satisfy our self-imposed expectations.

However, when we seek "to be" we will discover that the grace of God will begin to flow through us to the people around us and far more will be accomplished with far less angst. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart."

WOW... I will have all my desires fulfilled! Of course, that means there is a priority here... (1) as we delight in the Lord...He becomes the thrill and total focus of our lives, our thoughts will become more and more conformed to His and as our thoughts are conformed to His, then (2) He will obviously allow us to enjoy the fulfillment of our desires... His desires. There is no need to focus on "doing" because "being" like Christ will have a natural outflow of His character to those around us.

Where does this humility and honesty thing come into play? Let me share a definition found in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: " ... the habitual frame of mind of a child of God is that of one who feels not only that he owes all his natural gifts, etc., to God, but that he has been the object of undeserved redeeming love, and who regards himself as being not his own, but God’s in Christ. He cannot exalt himself, for he knows that he has nothing of himself. The humble mind is thus at the root of all other graces and virtues.




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