Sometimes I just do not understand what God is doing. (sic.) Somewhere in these pages I told the story of my telling a local pastor that God told me something. His response was that my hearing from God was of great concern to him. He then offered to pay for me to visit a Christian psychologist so we could find out why I thought I was hearing from God. What is wrong with that picture? Anyone who follows my teaching knows immediately. Psychologists, Christian or otherwise, practice (and I do mean practice) in the area of the soul. That dear readers is the essential problem with The Church in north America today. Not only do the leaders, (pastors, teachers, authors, etc.) operate all too often in the soulical realm, the rank and file members of The Church do not have the discernment to know it is happening. To be fair, neither do the people doing it realize they are. Oh wait, that is the problem that creates the problem. Or something like that.
(Now I am really baffled. That paragraph looks like it should be the first paragraph of the new post I already have a title for, but I am pretty sure it goes here. Oh well, we will forge ahead anyway and see where this goes.)
Humility is impossible when we are operating according to what we think is right. This is where it gets really dicey. That sounds completely counter-intuitive. We have to do what we think is right. It is just that our concepts of right and wrong have to be right. We have to have a standard against which to measure right and wrong. As Christians the only standard we can use is the Bible. We can quote our favorite people in the faith whether they be G. Campbell Morgan, Watchman Nee, Jack Hayford, Bill Winston or whomever, but if we allow any one of them to be our authority for right and wrong we have slipped into wrong.
(Okay, I get it now. The title of the next post is "Competing Voices" which follows this very nicely. The teaching on the grace of God will have to wait a little longer.)
The prevailing thought within The Church today seems to be that bigger is better. Well, let me tell you, that is the prevailing thought in the world. If that is the best we can do as Christians we are in real trouble. Come to think of it, being in real trouble, and not recognizing it, is the whole purpose for this blog.
We are either about building the Kingdom of God or we are about building our own kingdoms--always. The truly humble man or woman has come to realize that when he or she works at building God's Kingdom, God gets busy building his or her kingdom so that person will have the treasures to bring out of his or her storehouse to meet the needs of others. We all have something someone else needs. Humility dictates we offer it to them without regard to whether they receive it or not.
"...Therefore every teacher of the law who has been instructed about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old." Matthew 13:52
God bless!
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It is so far outside the capacity of the human mind to understand all of what grace is and can be for our lives. God's undeserved kindness in our lives rarely shows up the way we could conceptualize it. I think God does that so we could never possibly take credit for it; so we have to give Him the glory. Humility is one of those topics that must be constantly revisited because it's so easy to fall into pride, even in small ways. We have no way of fully grasping either of these concepts in the church the way it exists now because what is taught in church is most often regurgitated material that has been taught over and over, and it's been taught wrong. So a new generation of believers is being brought up on a false foundation. Humility is not founded on growing our own kingdoms, like you point out. The bible says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Matthew 6:33
ReplyDeleteKeep writing and God's grace will abound more and more as we seek Him and follow only His truth.
Intriguing post...you state the following toward the end:
ReplyDelete"We are either about building the Kingdom of God or we are about building our own kingdoms--always."
The 2nd half of the above quotation helped me to understand the first part a little bit better. At the risk of overstating your words, it seems like one could say the above another way: Either I'm working for the Kingdom of God or for my own kingdom. Who's the boss, right?
I'd like to interject another view. What if God isn't calling us to build His kingdom, but simply to proclaim His kingdom to others? I get the impression with the above quotation that work characterizes either position. I'm wondering if seeing my role as a kingdom proclaimer rather than a kingdom builder has the ability to take the pressure off so to speak.
Thoughts, impressions?
Proclaiming God's kingdom is building His kingdom. (see 1 Corinthians 3:6-11) I see it as an either/or situation. Whenever we do work for God, we are setting aside our own wants, desires, and the building of our own kingdoms. His response is to see that all our needs are met according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19) No pressure.
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