I'm a Little Cracked Pot |
| Posted by Mike (mike) on Nov 20 2007 at 11:16 AM |
I really like garlic (great segway, eh?). In fact, I eat a lot of garlic. So much so, that the day after, if I am exerting myself a lot, it comes out my pours. If I burp - you guessed it - garlic. If I fart... that another issue all together! All this to say all these out of sight - out of mind things keep "manifesting' like the garlic especially in times of stress and pressure. I think that's why God lets stressfull stuff happen 'cause then we can no longer lie, no longer forget they are there, then, maybe this time we'll deal with them. If not, rest assured we will have plenty of opportunity to deal with it again! This is refered to the fire, the threshing floor, refiners fire, etc.
God has been doing this in my life continually for 16 years now but seems to have taken a real liking to messing with me the last 6 or so months. This season, He has been speaking to me about pride. This pride is a little more sneaky beause it masquarades as christian virtue. It's stuff like ambition - my calling, my minsitry, my destiny, my inheritance, the words spoken over my life and my effort to pursue all those things. I kinda got into this in my last installment but this is very personal.
Ya see, all those things and variations of the above have always been taught and encouraged in my charimatic church experience. Seven steps to this, how to get Gods favor, claiming your inheritance, your destiny, be great for God - so on and so on. In this pursuit I have discovered that the very things I believed would lead me to greatness in God, infact was taking me in the opposite direction of the 'blessing that is to over take me'! If I am pursueing being great, being strong and mighty (all with a great christian pious veneer) - I am too full of myself for any of God! God will share His glory with no man!
I spoke with a man just yesterday. He is a part of a denomination that is in the midst of major shaking. In the midst of it, God has led him to make some very tough decisions and specific actions. These are a bit spooky for him as he doesn't see himself as a warrior and the Goliath he faces in pretty ominous. I was praying for him and God said that a warrior is not made over night but through years of preparation before we even know there is a batlte! The first step is when we say "Yes" in our hearts to Jesus.
The next thing the Lord showed me was David was a boy, a sheep herder. Yah I have heard all the teaching about killing the bear and the lion - valid and good but young David was NOT a warrior but a boy who loved God, knew he was loved by God and stepped out in revelation of that at the leading of the Lord. Consider the many warriors who marched the line - all the armor, the experience, the strength and all the talk and yet, the Lord sends a boy to kill the giant. Consider that Saul tried to give David his armour - the sword, spear, the modern armaments of the day. It was appearant that David could not use them.
I suspect that as sure as David was that he was to deal with Goliath - there must have been a sinking feeling in his belly as he approached this nine foot monster. Perhaps thoughts ran through his mind like - "this is insane" or "what am I, stupid?". I wonder if he re-thought leaving Sauls armor behind? I think it is easy sometimes for us to remove the humaness of our hereos - build them to be idealic of whatever our culture deems to be esteemed. I do expect David was quite human and probably had a few thoughts, a few concerns, a few 'oh no what have I done'.
None the less this boy went out trusting that God was enough. What happens next really stirs me - he grabs a few stones. If this were me I would be looking for huge boulders because I don't want this big dude getting back up! It would make sense to thump this guy with the biggest thing I could find especially after leaving the weapons behind! What amazed me is God used a boy, a shepherd at that (not a warrior) and a smooth stone to impact history in such a profound way - make a way for a nations destiny and a way for the entire world to enter into a relationship with God through a shepherd boys linage!
David was just a kid, living life. He was just delivering food to his brothers. He was an ordinary kid in love with an extraordinary God and God used him in his weakness, his child-likeness and in his simplicity. You can bet people looked at David walking out to the field to fight and laughed or cringed. No one would have picked him to kill Goliath - I wouldn't have.
My point is that Gods ways are not my ways and sadly my ways (the worlds ways) have influenced what I see as virtueous, godly and worthy of praise. My ways say that I need to be strong and fierce for the Lord. I need to be aggressive and ambitious to grab hold of everything I can for the Lord. I will be great, I will do this and do that, I will be well known, the mighty man of God, the great saint - I will leave a legacy! Booo YAAA! Sadly, the legacy is one of selfish ambition. But Gods ways are so different. It is not the great things we do for God as much as it is the great things He does through us and in us. He chooses the foolish things to confound the wise. The weak things, a shepherd boy, small smooth stones. His strength is perfect - the world hates weakness. God take simple, ordinary earthen vessels and puts a treasure in them - Himself. A pearl of great beauty reveals it's brillance on a simple black cloth. The container only serves to manifest how great the treasure is by comparison and doesn't seek to distract from the beauty of the pearl. The container seeks no and has no glory in or of it's own rather it is made beautiful and glorious by the treasure in which in holds.
We are those clay pots - cracked maybe, but we hold a treasure! We are called to seek God, love God with all that we are and in the midst of His pressence in us, we reflect His glory to a world that is deperately trying to hear above the noise of our rhetoric and to see beyond the flash of human pride - the glory and the splendor of the living God!
Seek first the Kingdom!
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