I stand before my maker,
becoming unmade and then made again,
sometimes yielding, sometimes fighting,
but always under the surgeon’s knife.
Which is greater, the pain of being shaped
or the pain of being left as I am?
Actions speak louder than words
“Actions speak louder than words” is a proverb whose over use sometimes masks the truth it contains. I read in Genesis 15:6, that Abram (soon to be Abraham) “believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” In Habakkuk 2:4, it says, “righteous shall live by his faith.”
All through Scripture we find that faith ( belief) and righteousness (action) are tied together. What we do comes as a result of what we believe. Therefore, what someone does is a good indication of what they believe.
For most of us (or perhaps I am only speaking for myself) this is a mixed bag. We have areas where our correct belief leads us to good practice, and then there are areas where our belief is week or misguided and we flip-flop like a fish on the dock.
For example, most of the time I am confident in God’s love for me and that confidence spills over into my relationships. When I have this confidence, I have freedom in relationships and I am not devastated if criticism comes my way. Then there are other times when I lack that confidence and I hear criticism in statements that are not intended to be critical.
The point of this is that the phrase “actions speak louder than words” should be used not so much for assessing others as for assessing myself. When my actions are not what I like them to be, I need to be honest about what belief (or unbelief) is underlying those actions.
One of my favorite prayers in Scripture is found in Mark 9:24 where a father cries out to Jesus, “I believe; help my unbelief!” This a pretty good starting place for positive change.
Checklist for Christian Service
What qualities must be present in the believer to be used by God to build His Church? Here is the list as I see it:
- Complete surrender to God
That’s it. One item. Everything else follows nicely after surrender.
Paul gives us a description of what this kind of surrender looks like in Philippians 3:8–11 (ESV)
8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Paul surrendered everything he had been prior to his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road. This surrender laid the foundation for the ministry that Paul was to have. Earlier in the same letter (Philippians 2:5-11) Paul points to Jesus as an example of one who surrendered his will to the father.
I am not writing this as one who has achieved this. It would be more accurate to say that I want to surrender and am in the process of doing so. The words of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 come to mind as they seem to express this desire as a prayer:
Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
I am finding that as I learn to surrender control and follow God’s lead, there is peace in the midst of uncertainty. I’m learning to be OK with not seeing how it all fits together. I’m learning to be OK with leaving people and events in God’s hands. I’m beginning to better understand where the extent of my responsibility ends and be content with the piece that God gives me to do.
Here’s to raising the white flag . . .
Kicked out for our own good
Growing up, when I read in Genesis Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, I always viewed this as a punitive action. I thought that our first parents were being punished for their sin.
This morning, as I read this passage, I noticed that the goal in expelling them from the Garden was to prevent them from eating from the tree of life and living forever.
Then the question came to me, was this punishment or grace? Would you want to live forever in a fallen state? I suppose that age has perhaps given me better perspective on this, but I can say now that I would not.
Imaging living in a perpetual state of knowing what you lost and knowing that it can never be recovered. To live forever with the knowledge of being flawed with no path to recovery would be a living hell. To see the mess that we have made of the world would have to be torture for Adam.
God was gracious to Adam and Eve as He is to us. He gives us a purpose for being here and takes us to be with Himself when our purpose is complete. This is grace from beginning to end. With this attitude, we can say with Paul, “to live is Christ, to die is gain.” (Phil. 1:21)
Let us live with the goal of fulfilling this purpose.
