Let Me Build My Kindgom First, Part 4

Sometimes, as people, we tend to leave things unfinished. This happens for any number of reasons. We get busy with something else and never get back to what we were doing. Children and husbands are especially good at this one. Perhaps we simply procrastinate. We think we will get to it, or back to it, but we just do not. Something like that happened to this post. Let us just say, I was not ready to write it when I wrote the first three installments in this series over a year ago. Hopefully I am now and it will make some kind of sense to you readers. God has a tendency to put things on hold until we are ready for the next step. He is always ready to take us to new levels of understanding, insight, and revelation, but He is never going to push us beyond what we are able or open to receive.

We have been going through the fourth chapter of James' epistle on Saturday evenings. Some version of fellowship has been more important lately so it seems to be taking the whole teaching time to get through just a couple verses on any given evening. That is just as well, since the book of James can be pretty intense. He does not mince words in pointing out our shortcomings. Pardon me if I am simply slower than you are, but I recently realized I had always thought James was writing to someone else. I mean, how could "adulterers and adulteresses" in verse 4 apply to me? Then it gets worse.

But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble." (vs. 6) There is a lot of teaching going around of late on the subject of grace. In fact, the other post I did not finish over a year ago is on that subject. Some of the teaching on grace going around is good, some very good and some not so good. More on that in the next post--or at least the one I intend to finish soon. For the purposes of this post, we simply want to point out that it is the humble who receive the grace of God. That, of course, begs the question of who the humble are who would be eligible to receive that grace; what is it that qualifies one to receive grace? And I would be remiss were I not to ask, "Is it my lack of humility that is blocking more of God's grace in my life?" (Do not be too quick to answer that question for me.)

I am a very blessed person by most people's standards. I have a wonderful, and growing family and circle of friends, good health, plenty of "things", and all my daily needs are met. Were those standards, God's full measure of grace, I must be a model of humility. Except I am not. I still say and do things I should not. I am too quick to point out the shortcomings of others. I have even been known to mutter foul language under my breath when things are not going as I would like them to. (True and something of an embarrassing confession.)

It is probably best here to just make the point and let you all decide the truth of it for yourselves. Here it is. Ready? Drum-roll please. There is more grace available than we have ever imagined, but we are not seeing it because we have a skewed idea of what humility is.

Well, the Holy Spirit will not let me write any more on this post. I am assuming that is because there is too much more to say. So I am going to hit the publish button--after the "preview" and probably the "check spelling" and "edit" buttons. Then on to part 4.2 and we will see what happens. See you there. God bless!