5.20.09
Colosians 3:23-24 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lordas a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
Being the baby brother to an older brother can have it's advantages. I can not tell you the amount of times that I got away with anything I wanted to just by screaming at the top of my lungs while unleashing a barage of tears that makes Niagra Falls look like a drippy faucet. I remember more times that my brother got grounded just for giving me an ugly look. It truly was one of the easiest things in the world to accomplish when I was a little boy. Anyone with an older sibling knows exactly what I'm talking about.
As I grew older the desire to get my brother into trouble got channeled in a completely different direction. I lost the baby brother mentality and became true competition for my older brother. By the time I got into high school I no longer wished to use my parents to out do my brother. It became my only mission in life to beat my brother at every thing that we did. He played football so I played football. If he was good wide receiver I was going to be the best quarterback. I was going to make sure that I was taking it a step further. When he took up high school wrestling you'd be right to guess that I took it up too. In fact I would set goals for myself to be better than him by and earlier age. I set my goals by what he did to be able to out do him. When I was a freshman in high school I set a goal to have a varsity letter by my sophomore year.
The problem with my way of thinking was that my goals had nothing to do with what I wanted or what was truly healthy. It came only from a desire to beat my brother. Eventually my father helped me realize that I didn't have to make everything with my brother a competition but I should continue to strive for exellence with a different goal in mind, to make myself a better person.
I think often about the competition that I had to beat my brother because it makes me think about how I serve today and what my actions truly mean today. It can become so easy in our competitive world to lose sight of why we do what we do. Sometimes it is because we want to out do a co-worker, or because we want our boss, colleagues, friends and family to see how great we are. Have you ever found yourself doing something nice for someone just to get the congratulations, or working extra hours at work just so that your boss will tell you how great you are, so that you can have your ego stroked. We all do it. Who doesn't like being told they're great? If you say "Not me" I challenge you to re-examine yourself.
What happens when we begin to work for the accolades is that we actually take the focus off the one we serve and focus it on us as the servant. We begin to become competition for attention, and the competition is against our Lord the one we serve. You see God wants us to continue to strive for exellence at work, and do nice things for others but not so that we'll get the praise but rather so that folks will see Him alive in us. Christ has a desire to be seen in all that we do. One of the greatest thoughts I ever heard growing up was Share the Gospel with someone today, use words if you have to. Meaning we have to let go of the me and let others see Him in all that we do. Next time you are faced with an opportunity to serve, do it and don't tell anyone. Your inheritance and blessings come from the Lord. If someone doesn't know that you did it for them does it count just the same? Sometimes that is where people see the Lord work. In a anonymous blessing.
Thought question: Would you still act and do what you do if no one ever saw, heard or knew about what you were doing? In other words are you living the Gospel despite who sees it?
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Blind Faith
5.14.09
1 Peter 1:8-9 "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
When I was little I can remember getting ready for bed and saying goodnight to my mother. Each night she would tuck me in and say goodnight and go to the door to shut it and I would plead with her to leave it open as much as possible and she would almost always concede (I think do to the fact that I would have screamed like a air raid siren if she hadn't). She would however always shut out the lights and that would send me into a state of fear that was like nothing one could ever imagine. I was so afraid of the dark it wasn't funny. The reason being because I was 100% sure that some sort of undead creature or ghost was going to come after me. It never helped that I had older siblings that convinced me, after watching the movie Night of the Living Dead, that there were really living dead people found in Kansas and they weren't sure how to kill them.
Anyway my only combat against the creatures of the night was to hide desperately under my blanket and leave only a hole enough for me to breathe. Some how in my mind my blanket made it impossible for anything to see me. The fact was that I thought if they didn't see me than they couldn't get me. I was little how was I to know that a small bit of fabric and cotton wasn't keeping anything out. That blanket was used to make forts and strongholds that no weapon could take out, what would keep it from stopping the undead while I slept?
Whether or not the blanket would stop the ghouls and goblins of night was not the issue, and obviously it worked because I'm here today to write. The issue is as a child I was completely convinced that something was out there to get me and I had never seen an undead person or a ghost in my room. I had never once witnessed a zombie attack anyone and further more had never once seen a news report that would support such a claim. It remains that I believed strictly on the fact that someone told me that the undead were real and they wanted to suck my brains out. I was very much influenced by the words of another human being.
It seems to me that this is the way that the early Christian church had to have gotten started. It took hundreds and thousands of people who would take on the attributes of children and just believe the words of others. They would have to take to listening to the experiences of folks who walked with Christ. Jesus often talked about wanting us to be like little children with our faith. He wanted us so badly to trust and believe in Him. Like me with my older siblings Jesus wants us to hear His words and believe in them.
This childlike faith does not mean that we become drones and robots to the faith and every thing everyone tells us. It means that we trust in One, the one who claimed to be Immanuel, God with us. Hebrews 11 talks about faith being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. I think this verse and the verse in 1 Peter sum up what Jesus wants for us more than anything in our personal walks with Him. I believe He wants us to have faith that He is who claims to be, and the fact of the matter is that He is a loving Savior with a desire to walk with us everyday.
Thought question: For you what does childlike faith mean you have to let go of? In other words what keeps you from just believing without having to see the actual physical evidence?
1 Peter 1:8-9 "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
When I was little I can remember getting ready for bed and saying goodnight to my mother. Each night she would tuck me in and say goodnight and go to the door to shut it and I would plead with her to leave it open as much as possible and she would almost always concede (I think do to the fact that I would have screamed like a air raid siren if she hadn't). She would however always shut out the lights and that would send me into a state of fear that was like nothing one could ever imagine. I was so afraid of the dark it wasn't funny. The reason being because I was 100% sure that some sort of undead creature or ghost was going to come after me. It never helped that I had older siblings that convinced me, after watching the movie Night of the Living Dead, that there were really living dead people found in Kansas and they weren't sure how to kill them.
Anyway my only combat against the creatures of the night was to hide desperately under my blanket and leave only a hole enough for me to breathe. Some how in my mind my blanket made it impossible for anything to see me. The fact was that I thought if they didn't see me than they couldn't get me. I was little how was I to know that a small bit of fabric and cotton wasn't keeping anything out. That blanket was used to make forts and strongholds that no weapon could take out, what would keep it from stopping the undead while I slept?
Whether or not the blanket would stop the ghouls and goblins of night was not the issue, and obviously it worked because I'm here today to write. The issue is as a child I was completely convinced that something was out there to get me and I had never seen an undead person or a ghost in my room. I had never once witnessed a zombie attack anyone and further more had never once seen a news report that would support such a claim. It remains that I believed strictly on the fact that someone told me that the undead were real and they wanted to suck my brains out. I was very much influenced by the words of another human being.
It seems to me that this is the way that the early Christian church had to have gotten started. It took hundreds and thousands of people who would take on the attributes of children and just believe the words of others. They would have to take to listening to the experiences of folks who walked with Christ. Jesus often talked about wanting us to be like little children with our faith. He wanted us so badly to trust and believe in Him. Like me with my older siblings Jesus wants us to hear His words and believe in them.
This childlike faith does not mean that we become drones and robots to the faith and every thing everyone tells us. It means that we trust in One, the one who claimed to be Immanuel, God with us. Hebrews 11 talks about faith being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. I think this verse and the verse in 1 Peter sum up what Jesus wants for us more than anything in our personal walks with Him. I believe He wants us to have faith that He is who claims to be, and the fact of the matter is that He is a loving Savior with a desire to walk with us everyday.
Thought question: For you what does childlike faith mean you have to let go of? In other words what keeps you from just believing without having to see the actual physical evidence?
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