Let Another Man's Lips Praise Thee?

Tuesday 3/28/2013 6:11 AM

My devotional theme for the week is liberty.  The prayers in my devotional book suggest that I pray for delivery from bondage to worries, habits and desires, good suggestions to be sure.  My assigned reading includes Colossians 2:18-19, “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you.  Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.  They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.”  This verse made me think about my need for the praise of others.  As a child I remember hearing people quote Proverbs 27:2, “Let another man’s lips praise thee, and not thine own.”  I think the verse is a warning against pride but I internalized it and it turned into an unhealthy need for the approval of others.

Sunday morning after church a woman told me her husband appreciated my comments in our Wednesday evening men’s Bible study.  I’m not exactly sure what she was referring to but I like to play the devil’s advocate in a group of like-minded people.  In groups like that it is easy to give a “churchy” answer to a question and then move on to the next question.  I want people to wrestle with the hard issues of life that often don’t have simple answers, the things that people struggle with every day to whom Christians often quote a simple verse and move on.  Sometimes I wonder why I am so drawn to playing that role.  Is it to make people wrestle with the issues or is it so that I can appear to be a deep thinker, someone in tune with the heart of God?

The verse above serves as a warning to me that I make sure that I don’t lose my connection to Christ, the head of his body, the church.  My desire for the praise of others and my desire to be seen as an intellectual or a deep thinker could easily drive me to invent clever scenarios or stories that make me appear smart but have little to do with the growth of others in their faith.  Lord, set me free from the need for praise from others.

Schist

Friday 3/22/2013 4:56 AM

Two images described believers in my reading today.  Psalm 1 describes the blessed man who trusts in God as a fruit tree planted by streams of water and 1 Peter 2 describes him as a living stone, being built into a spiritual house.  Both descriptions bring to mind an image of something unmoving that supports others, the tree by producing fruit and the stone by supporting the others built upon it.

At the moment I feel neither unmoving nor able to support others.  I feel like a deciduous tree in the midst of winter, whose sap has withdrawn to the roots showing no sign of life to an outside observer.  If I am a stone I feel like schist, crumbling and flaking under any kind of pressure or contact.

As I contemplated those images the Spirit of God reminded me that deciduous trees bud with new life in the spring as the daylight hours increase and the days become warmer.  The Spirit also reminded me that schist is a metamorphic rock, one that changes over time because of exposure to heat and to pressure.

The Spirit of God is at work in me, morphing me into the image of Christ.  He reminded me today that this work requires the same things required in nature: heat, pressure and time.  Rather than feeling discouraged at times like this I should remember the work of God doesn’t stop, and the flaking and deadness I feel now could easily be a sloughing off of my sinful nature, readying me to be clothed with Christ.  I need patience to see the process through to the end.

Shadowland

Monday 3/11/2013 5:38 AM

The theme for my devotions this week is doubts.  I always thought that as I grew older my faith would become stronger and I would have more faith with less doubt.  It seems the opposite is true when I look at the world situation today.  It seems as if evil is more prevalent than good and growing stronger by the minute so it is easy to doubt that the kingdom of God is advancing.

In his book That the World May Believe, Hans Küng explains, “Questions of faith are not like riddles or crossword puzzles: with things of this sort it may take one some time to find the solution, but once it’s found, everything is clear and simple.  It is completely different with faith.  There we have, not human truth which men can state and understand, but God’s truth, which goes far beyond any statement or understanding of man’s.  The faith never becomes clear.  The faith remains obscure. … Only when we are in glory will it be otherwise.  Until then there will always be more difficulties coming up, more doubts coming up: there are bound to be.  Doubt is the shadow cast by faith.  One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed.”

If he is right about doubt being the shadow cast by faith I should not be surprised that my doubts increase as my faith increases.  A big faith should cast a big shadow.