In Praise of the One Who Guides

September 16, 2013September 16, 2013 Michael4 Comments

The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. (Ps. 121:7-8)

Have you ever known you had lost your way or fallen out of the will of God? Let me share that moment in my life and God’s providential yet strangely dramatic way of pulling me back on course.

I returned from work overseas in 2004 and started searching for a job. But the economy was tanking and my hopes shriveled into a horrendously long unemployment. Frustrated and determined to make something happen, I decided to return to retail management with the drugstore where I had worked eight years beginning in high school. But it would be somewhere away from my stagnant hometown region.

So I went hunting. I analyzed cities and matched them with a list of personal criteria. I finally settled on Indianapolis. This would be my life’s first throw-a-dart-at-the-map-and-go moment. I then emailed a district manager in the area about the possibility of a management position, and in one day I received a reply telling me to come and interview.

Well I got the job and things were mostly fine, except one unsettling thing. I would often walk out of my apartment headed to my car thinking, Michael, why are you here? Away from home on my own in the city of my choice, enjoying my independence, yet I sensed that I was out of the will of God.

Time passed until one momentous day—Thursday, June 8^th(2006), around 12:30 p.m. Let’s call it the “intervention.”

It was my day off. I still remember it: I was sitting on the couch watching the French Open tennis tournament. Someone knocked at the door, which was unusual; I opened it and greeted a professional plumber not part of the complex staff, even more unusual. He talked to me about the laundry room just a few feet away; it had been flooded for some time.

He explained that all signs pointed to a blockage most likely directly beneath my kitchen. And the only way to reach it was tear out the floor. Action needed to be taken immediately lest it led to further trouble.

The office offered me two options: place all my things in a provided storage pod and stay in a hotel for a few weeks or move out without penalty and receive my deposit back—oh, I needed to be decided today; the work needed to start tomorrow.

In previous weeks my sister had talked to me about returning home. My finances were slowing sliding into perdition. Bills were stacking up and the rent was now difficult to pay. My sister gladly offered to let me stay at her place and insisted that I come. But I resisted because I didn’t wish to be there and felt that I could get a handle on the situation.

For any normal person, moving, at all, would have certainly been an inconvenience, but they would have gone on and moved into the hotel. Who could possibly pack up and move without notice? But when the plumber left, I closed the door and thought, Could this be God giving me a way out? I seriously considered returning to Virginia.

I cannot express the stress I endured for the next 12 hours. This decision seemed to throw my world into a tailspin, and I was a basket case. The management nagged me about my decision. Then, I wondered how would I leave my job or haul away my belongings if I indeed decided to leave? Staying was the reasonable (and sane) thing to do. Any image of a nervous wreck you can come up with, I fit the bill that day. At one point, I sat in my car in tears, beaten merciless by a pressing decision.

(And why does it seem God isn’t speaking whenever you need to clearly hear him?)

By 4 p.m. or so I called the management and told them that I would move away. I could hear the stun in the woman’s silence. In fact, in the hours following the conversation with the plumber, I had a terribly difficult conversation with my boss and I borrowed money from home to rent a U-Haul and car hitch.

By 2 a.m. my entire apartment was packed in boxes; at 6 a.m. I loaded the truck; at 8 a.m. I dropped off the house key; then I had my car hitched to the truck and returned my work keys; and in 600 miles and about 24 hours after my decision to leave, my life had totally changed.

The Providence of God

I apologize for the details, but they mean so much to the process God used to teach me what I share now. I’m sure you understand.

Romans 8:28 explains that God works together with us to bring about his good purpose. But Paul also explains in the preceding verses that the Spirit helps us in our weakness; that we don’t always know how to pray as we should, so he helps us.

I knew I was on the fringes of God’s will just being in Indiana. Moreover, I experienced the worst spiritual slump of my life during that time, and vice grew like weeds. I didn’t like myself. Yes, I was weak, but thank God I was never lost to him.

Just maybe God was in the details of my bizarre departure, you think? I was out of place geophysically and spiritually. God knew that I would have never left Indianapolis without the rushed decision coupled with my growing financial burden.

I heard later that people at my workplace assumed I was running away from some type of trouble. No, I recognize it as divine providence, God’s guidance and preservation over his creation, including human life. It is his sovereignty over situations and even evil that ultimately results in the fulfillment of his will and good purpose. It is as much mysterious as it is pervasive and great.

The providence of God supplies us with confidence that when we veer off course, he watches over and steers us back into the right lane. But his way with us may not always be conventional.

Sometimes we get a glimpse of the value of his saving hand. Psalm 116:8 says, “For you, Lord, have delivered me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.” Perhaps there was a financial collapse ahead of me or worse. Where in your life do you perceive God saved you? Some of us, by now, might have been in grave troubles or even dead, but God intervened. Is he not worthy of praise?

The psalmist continues (vv. 12-13):

What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.

John the Baptist

August 27, 2013January 26, 2014 Michael7 Comments

John the Baptist—the more I think of him the more I consider how his peculiar upbringing must have resembled Jesus’s.

The archangel Gabriel had detailed John’s life and purpose to his father Zechariah in the temple. John would be great and greatly used by God. Certainly Zechariah and Elizabeth were proud to know this, declared by the chief emissary of Heaven. “He will be a joy and delight to you,” Gabriel had promised.

But I wonder what became of their mood as John grew. This son of the priest bore a deep spirituality, but did it look like it was going off the rails as it evolved? Did his attitude toward Israel, fierce message of repentance, and uncustomary baptism of Jews seem radical to his parents? And were they maxed out and questioning God when John left the comfort of home for the wilderness, a preaching ascetic and possible embarrassment to his father?

I don’t know. Perhaps Zechariah had learned well from his first bout of unbelief and muteness and fully trusted despite his concerns. Furthermore, how do we respond to our relatives and acquaintances when their pattern of life or spirituality takes turns that throw our minds into tailspins? It can be scary to watch.

Everything’s Gonna Be All Right

Most of us haven’t had the assurance of an angel that our Johnny was gonna be okay. It would be great if there were a way to be certain that the people we love would turn out all right in their emotional and spiritual development. Since there isn’t, we have to do the next best things, which I will explain.

Concerns or problems do not exist in vacuums; people are involved. We must remember that dealing with potential issues is necessarily relational. We must avail ourselves to people about whom we have concerns. No one appreciates being viewed as a problem or problematic. Even mentally ill people deserve the respect of being treated as persons.

True care for people makes it easier for us to hear them, see the issue fully or discern whether there really is one, and offer our knowledge and counsel. We cannot help people we do not love.

Moreover, we must sometimes release people to discover their own way. This can be hard but none of us like hearing stories about folk hard-pressed by religious rearing who rebel. We would never want to create haters of God.

Freedom grants a person the ability to detach from all he or she knows to rummage through the piles of acquired wisdom and decide for themselves what they believe—and we should respect a person’s right to think and choose for themselves. Joshua expresses this marvelously: “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served…or the gods…in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (24:15).

We should not view this negatively, as though we release a person to their doom. This is to forget the providence of God. Sometimes people go through periods of questioning, conflict, or gloom like stages in birth without which we would never see the light of greatness within them. No, we never give up on others but can be certain that God will control what we cannot.

The process may not always feel good or look glamorous, but just because it doesn’t look like what we expected doesn’t mean God isn’t in it. We just have to trust him.

Now, Back to John…

We see the full picture of John the Baptist and know that he was among the greatest Hebrew prophets. He must have owned a deep spirituality and interaction with God, for he sensed a profound call and exercised astute spiritual discipline.

I can imagine that John would have been viewed as uncouth by many of his society when, in fact, he was spiritually avant-garde. But he was what he was—by some an assumed religious quack roaming the back country—because of what was inside of him. John’s process was the only way for his greatness to come forth.

John’s testimony of Jesus (John 1:29-34) is pretty revealing to me of God’s power and reality in his life. John and Jesus didn’t know one another, and John had no reason to know that Jesus was the Messiah until he baptized him. But it wasn’t merely the baptism that pointed out Christ to John; Jesus already existed in John’s pronounced spiritual aptitude. Look and ponder carefully:

I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit’ (1:32-33).

If Zechariah and Elizabeth could have only seen how their boy turned out.

More on this topic: God, Our Contender

The Journey to Disappointment

August 10, 2013August 9, 2014 Michael5 Comments

There have been times in my life when I’ve descended to fight the fiercest battles against the past possibilities of my life. It never took much to engage: a family member’s new success; an acquaintance’s marriage or new baby; the news of old friends excelling. It could all send me over the edge because I always seemed to be going nowhere.

So I would turn my weapon and inflict harm on myself—If you had only bought this, not done that, tried harder, moved there, stayed longer, saved more, asserted yourself, learned this, said no, spoke up, imitated him, asked her, agreed to everything, and been a real man, you might be farther up the road, more pleasing to yourself, your people, and your God.

I’d snap from the madness minutes later like a limb in the face. So what if you’re right? I often thought. And what if it is partially true that the way things have turned out for you is not entirely your fault? None of this was the point though. What would that hill of sorrows ever matter? So I’d concede to the apparent: nothing so obvious in a battle.

Perhaps the places we’ve had to pass through in life were not all necessary to get us where we stand. We mess up sometimes. We fail to heed good advice; we become neglectful. It is often the case for many of us that where we are in life is not where we wish we were, but it is certainly better than many conditions in which we could find ourselves. Yet where we are might make it worth taking another look at where we’ve come from.

Look at you—the cuts and bruises, your sweat-soaked head and blood-filled mouth, burning lungs and tired limbs. They all speak wonders of a person who would have welcomed demise not long ago. Somewhere something happened that put armor in your flesh and turned a heart into iron. The double-take reveals that where you stand, in maturity and insight, is light years ahead of where methods would have gotten you by now.

Lightning couldn’t strike a more terrifying revelation in that moment that what-ifs and alternate realities cannot be trusted. Having one’s “ducks in a row” and charting every cent and second of one’s life may require just a pullet feather to topple it all. Moreover, we don’t interview the ones on hospital beds now or in prison now to hear the other half of glamorous, climbing-the-ladder, American Dream stories, the ones that take dramatic detours.

I am not what I do! I am not what I possess! I am not what others think of me! I will not be a pawn of any system!

Sure, some say, this is precisely the argument of someone lamenting his or her failed life, and it’s easy to concede to spiritualities then. But this is no failure or newfound faith. It is merely a second look at what we now understand to be the long way around, a redemptive and awfully appreciable route.

Do not make the mistake of hearing me equate the rat race with normal living and progress, for too often this is what progressiveness gets us, especially in this generation. “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24) is so radically inclusive of all the many cares of life in which we foolishly place our trust. I am guilty of it—why else should I share my grief?

I know what it is to put it all on paper only to watch the paper go up in smoke. I know what to tire feels like and understand rough-hewn Peter, captain and fisherman, contesting Christ: “We have been out here all night while you were sleeping. But just this once, at your strange insistence, we’ll launch again” (Luke 5:4-11).

We must trust God. “For he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). We are not forgotten, wherever we find ourselves on this journey. He is closer to us in the process than we perceive.

“’The Lord has deserted us; the Lord has forgotten us.’ Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:14-16)

God of the Process

July 21, 2013June 29, 2014 Michael2 Comments

“We have all had parents who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!” (Hebrews 12:9)

I grew up hearing the old church mothers exhorting that the Lord desires a ‘yes’ from his people. Although I thought I knew what that meant, it has not been until now, many years later in my walk with God, that I understand it. What has become most clear to me along the way is all that it does not necessarily mean. It cannot always suggest that I have turned away from God to seek worldly pleasures. It doesn’t imply that I have refused God’s commands. If it pertains to my willingness to engage in ministry, I cannot be considered slothful.

I have learned that the ‘yes’ God wants from me and us all is the readiness to submit to his plan for our lives and by the path he has chosen. Simply, it is to follow God’s plan God’s way.

The Necessity of Conditioning

We often wrestle with God’s purpose for us despite our sincere desire for it. God may have given us a glimpse of his intent for our lives, but his plan for our possessing that goal may not be as convenient as we expect it to be. In our hearts, we sometimes rebel against the chosen path and, more notably, against it being our Father’s choice for us. We rebel because the way God leads is designed to elicit a faith-filled response from us, and never did we imagine that the way of faith could be so difficult. We will be tested and kept relying on God’s grace.

God promises us, however, that the process will never destroy us and that he has a plan and the power to restore anything lost during that time. But a process it is. The blessedness of the path, however, is that we will be made more efficient in God’s plan.

Among the greatest stories in Scripture are the lessons we discover in the life of Joseph. At a young age, God showed Joseph his life’s purpose, but it was 13 years before it became reality. God knew that Joseph had to be trained and conditioned to carry the vision of God. It is the same for us. There is never lack in the vision. The work of God within us is in perfect condition, like a seed awaiting prime soil conditions. The vision, however, has to be sheltered from the very ones who possess it.

Lurking in the saintliest hearts are all the vices that, under a different kind of circumstance, may halt the purpose of God in our lives. So God must perform a work on the heart that makes the two—his vision and the bearer—compatible. This work is also necessary because without the bearer being conditioned, the weight and demand of God’s vision would simply be unbearable.

Is God Unfair?

Joseph would never have become rescuer for his people had he resisted Egypt. Now a little common sense offers some explanation here. There is no one who being kidnapped to live in bondage to another person wouldn’t utterly detest his circumstance. There are unfortunate people today—the ones we see on milk cartons or in the news—somewhere living lives that have been forced on them. Joseph’s situation was similar. Our common humanity with Joseph assures us that there were tough days when he cried and became hysterical and longed for his parents and festered with hateful feelings at everyone, including God. There must have also come the day when the tragic reality seized him that he was never leaving Egypt.

It is in times when our situation is formidably colossal and sealed with finality that maturity and faith must be relied on to teach us how to cope with the hand we’ve been dealt. Although Joseph could have never factored Egypt into God’s plan for his life, he would never have survived it without looking beyond the hopelessness of his dilemma. He must have fought himself not to doubt in his darkness what he had once seen in the light.

Is God unfair? Does he want to punish us without cause? Surely he would not contradict his own character to bring about his purpose. No, but the process to God-given greatness, which God carefully controls, is necessary for the promotion he wishes to bring us. The promotion God gives is different from what we see in the world. God’s promotion comes with a righteous objective. He doesn’t raise people just to live in self-absorbed privilege of any kind. Instead, promotion comes as a precursor to righteous judgment that will institute good and halt evil (Prov. 11:10).

Gaining Clearer Insight

After a person has come through the process that God has designed for them, God may bestow a certain abundance or success upon him or her, just as he did for Joseph; only now it is abundance to one for whom it no longer matters. This is because God’s process brings clarity of priority and insight and excises all attachment to things and invention and the frivolous so that what remains is a heart fixed upon the purpose of God.

Thus, those who resist the process resist their own deliverances and those of others in the future who depend on their faithfulness to the process. There is a host of people that only God can see that depend on the process of extraction—the fire—that God desires to lead us through; not only that we may be their teachers, but rather that we might open to them the way into God’s righteous cause.

The point is poignant: Our suffering is redemptive and reaps a harvest we cannot yet see. The vision of God for Joseph, as it is for us, was all-encompassing. Joseph did not merely become prime minister or the architect of a survival plan for Egypt’s devastating famine. He was a spiritual deliverer of God’s people into promise, an intercessor between God and man.

“God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” (Genesis 45:7)

The Unveiling

God’s plan for us is immense and pervasive, but he requires that we be in the place he designates for us. This is what our life is about, calling. The call of God is not a vocation or anything we may presume it to be. Contrarily, it is what we learn by spiritual intuition, as Joseph received dreams from God, and it is the righteous purpose that lures us into position. Our position, the place of purpose, is where God ultimately wishes for us to land. It is unimpeded, Spirit-empowered ministry that was always God’s intent, the life force deeply implanted in the seed. For Joseph, it was as ruler in Egypt.

It is crucial to understand here. The promotion God gives is not the same as the position. Promotion is never a sigh of relief but only a sign that we should proceed to the highest purpose God has chosen for us. What good was Prime Minister or any leadership position to Joseph if, let’s say, he were still micromanaged by a suspicious Pharaoh or caught up in the thicket of political skirmish? The scenarios are endless, although there is no indication of this type of circumstance in the story.

The point is that the fortuity of being taken from prison to the palace within itself could not signal the most important thing God wanted to give Joseph. God’s blessings—true blessings—don’t lend us further grief. It should also be clarified that God’s plan for us is not simply a pain-to-promotion scheme. Why would God punish us just to reward us with plenty? Could he not have given us the plenty without the pain? This is how we know that there must be some redemptive purpose in our suffering. God’s own character safeguards us.

The promotion God gives us guarantees all the authority and comfort with which we may execute his plan that we now understand is no longer about us. This promotion catalyzes, or initiates, the full intent of God in one’s life. So it wasn’t merely a leadership post for Joseph; God made him to rule, to be the chief executor. He was granted unlimited power to act as he saw fit on behalf of all Egypt. Pharaoh took the signet ring from his own finger and placed it on Joseph’s hand telling him, “I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt” (Gen. 41:44).

It was a staggering turn of events that must have sent shockwaves throughout the region, amazing Joseph just as well. But God was still getting his way with Joseph. As prime minister (the promotion) God gave Joseph the means and clout to rule (the position and purpose) and not just a reward for his suffering. This led to him engineering a rations strategy for the famine whereby he saved and sustained Egypt and God’s chosen people and, thereby, God’s plan for them. Ultimately, he delivered the Hebrew people into God’s promise and helped pave the way for Christ. How important was Joseph in the plan of God—and his suffering.

More on this topic: God, You’re Killing Me! and New Strength is Coming!

The Person God Chooses

June 25, 2013June 28, 2015 MichaelLeave a comment

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

Nothing is news to God. Our common, human customs and contingencies are atypical of Heaven. What are recent events or developing stories to us were in the mind of God before time. Astounding as it may be, God’s omniscience should be encouraging to those who trust him. His providence means that he mightily and lovingly controls all that can be known. Nothing happens that is outside of his intelligence.

That includes us, too. God knows every aspect of our lives. He understands the range of our unique personalities, our likes and dislikes, desires and temptations, potential, and even the possibilities of an infinite combination of our choices. He knew the when-and-where of our birth before the world existed. He knows about our work, finances, relationships, goals, and health. He has already seen our final days and cross into the afterlife. Again, this is encouraging to know.

He Knows Us

Sometimes we get moody with God, however, because we too know some things about him and ourselves, if only meager by comparison. One thing we realize is that his great holiness and our sinful imprudence don’t comport, and we find it inelegant and awfully hard-to-believe that, beyond our relationship, he still chooses us for his service.

Then, with what has to be exasperating to God, we find other non-issues with which to excuse ourselves from the divine call. Jeremiah saw himself as too young (1:6). Gideon felt he was too poor and wrestled feelings of God’s abandonment (Judges 6:13, 15). Moses deemed himself insignificant, speech-impeded, and ignorant of God (Ex. 3:11-13; 4:10). The first task seems to be God getting us out of the way of his using us!

God tells Jeremiah in very concrete language, “I knew everything there was to know about you before your life began. And I had already determined to use you as my prophet!” This had to be an eye-opening moment for Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 1:5 is one of those verses people often whip out with some use of emotional provocation; however, if we stop and think about it—and put ourselves in Jeremiah’s place—we might catch a glimpse of God’s greatness implied therein.

Still Within His Reach

In 1 Timothy 3, Paul gives a list of qualifications for overseers and deacons in the church. The bar of moral character is set high. They are reasonable qualities by traditional leadership standards and Christian ideals. Even the secular world today affirms such expectations of Christian leadership.

But to say that Paul’s list requires perfection in any way is to miss the point. God doesn’t call perfect people because there are none. All people, even the most spiritually disciplined ones, daily deal with the very personal problem of sin; and let no one convince you that he or she does not.

Let’s be honest about this: There are many reasons for God to reject us for his service, reasons well beyond the ones we can point out to him. He knows what else lies within our hearts and what will develop there; the circumstances that might activate vice; and how we will deal with it. Still, he chooses us.

Despite all our failings and misgivings, he is eager to make us his ambassadors and to display his strength where we can only prove weak. It is the depth and glory of his love.

So after we’ve messed up big-time, lost our heads and sinned to the max, wanted no part of God and his ways, and then regained our spiritual composure and wondered if he could possibly still use us, let us rest assured that he never left our side and tells us, as he did Peter, “I’ve already prayed for you that your faith wouldn’t fail. Now that you’ve repented and returned to me, go strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32, my paraphrase).

Our Joyful Obligation

This underscores another point. The fact that God is relentless to use us in his service should drive us to serve him better. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 4:1-2, “Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God.”

Such mercy should strike the chord of spiritual discipline within us and cause us to yield to the Holy Spirit’s work to transform us in Christlikeness. This includes our resolution to fight and conquer sin, our willingness to accept our eternal status as God’s debtors, and our conscientious endeavor to think about ourselves as God does.

And to be clear, this isn’t just about those called by God to special or highly visible ministry, such as a pastor. God will use anyone that avails him- or herself to him for the smallest of tasks that spread his character, name, and kingdom. It’s just a matter of degree on our part: how much of ourselves are we willing to give him, including those weak areas of our lives?

No Need to Hide

Let’s be even more candid about Jeremiah 1:5. God, knowing everything there is to possibly know about us, knew the sinful penchants and weights we would deal with in life—the excesses, vile urges, secret rages, and sinful comforts we all have faced.

We hide our indecencies from others like we conceal our naked bodies. We act this way toward God, too. We feel that what is odious and shameful before others should also be hidden from God, for he certainly detests it more; ergo, he will certainly reject us as people do.

First, it is pointless to hide anything from God because he knew about it before we did. Second, we are right to evince an attitude of shame and culpability for the weak and sinful parts of our lives. Yes, Christ took our shame so that we wouldn’t have to be shamed by our sin; however, we respect God’s holiness and should feel uncomfortable about sin controlling any part of us.

NC-ND, Fabrizio Lonzini Flickr — NC-ND, Fabrizio Lonzini, Flickr

But, third, God doesn’t reject us in our sin but asks us to draw near with naked honesty. Only then can we find “the grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). God is not like us. Exposure to his light gives freedom. Remember, Jesus came and took our sin upon himself in order to place his righteousness on us.

Concealing weakness and sin, apart from being a silly thing to do in God’s sight, is unbiblical and more harmful than helpful. Solomon states it best: “Those who conceal their sins do not prosper, but those who confess and renounce them find mercy” (Prov. 28:13).

David says, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Ps. 32:3). God can do more with the heart that prays, Lord, I’m struggling and I need your help, than with the one, like Adam in the Garden, who runs to hide from him.

And let’s be real—some things from our past lives we may struggle with until we die. But God honors the one who keeps fighting while relying on his grace not to be overcome.

Even Our Weakness…an Offering

Moreover, God doesn’t only use us despite our vices but also because of them. Two fish and five loaves of bread were useless to a crowd of multiple thousands. But such a weakness given into Jesus’s hands became a miracle. This is ministry.

The weak areas of our lives that we’re willing to place in God’s hands can be the starting place of healing for someone else. What we are willing to share of our own struggles and deliverances, God can use to draw others to himself. We may not be able to share every detail about our troubled or sinful past, but our honesty before God, in the least, will keep us compassionate and empathic toward others who suffer in ways we did or still do (1 Cor. 6:11).

And as we know of Christ’s ministry, compassion is a portal of the glory of God.

This is why a revamp toward deep spiritual discipline is important. The fruit of the Spirit growing where sin once abounded in our lives is the safeguard that we won’t disregard those who find themselves in our former, unenlightened state. We have an obligation to God to be transformed by what has altered our circumstance.

Jesus, in Matt. 18:21-35, tells the story of the unmerciful servant who was forgiven his debt of 10,000 bags of gold but couldn’t forgive his fellow servant’s debt of 100 silver coins. This incurs God’s judgment. When we’ve received grace, we can offer grace; however, to refuse to do so is egregious sin.

Content to Be His

Thank God that sin and weakness isn’t enough to change God’s mind about us. He still desires us and can use our lives and various situations to bring others closer to himself. So to all of our shamefulness, outrage, incredulity, and excuses, we are still his choice.

He could send the angels in dazzling displays of heaven-on-earth to preach us out of sin and convince everyone to believe. But, no, he uses “jars of clay” instead (2 Cor. 4:7), cracked and stained and fragile, to show other cracked pots how they too can display the beauty of salvation.