Useful
Pete just returned from a trip to Colorado to visit his friend Jerry Leachman. As Moses climbed Mount Sinai to meet with the Lord, we need to stop and deliberately ascend the heights to encounter the Lord in a mountain top experience. We need to take time to be alone with God in order to meditate upon the word of God, to commit ourselves wholly to his word so that our profiting may appear unto all.
To understand and accept God’s ways we need to get to the point that we accept the mysteries, paradoxes and contradictions of this life. The new man of the spirit of life in Christ must understand that the kingdom of this world is upside down relative to the kingdom of heaven. God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts…for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so much higher are his ways than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts. The law of the spirit of life in Christ is in antithetical to the law of sin and death. To go up you must go down. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time he will lift you up. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. He that is chief among you must be servant of all. To be rich, you have to become poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. To be right you must acknowledge that you’re wrong. For God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. As John the Baptist said, “I must decrease so that he may increase.” To be useful to God, you have to realize you’re useless without his purpose. The question is, “Am I prepared to be used by my Lord.” Like Samuel said, “here am I Lord, send me.”
According to Oswald Chambers’ devotional, there’s no such thing as a private life to those who know and understand Jesus’ suffering on our behalf. We have been called to the fellowship of the gospel. Our lives are a thoroughfare for those to whom God has called us to minister. Our response to the trials of life will either further the progress of the Gospel or hinder it. God orchestrates and works all things for the good of the Gospel for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Our sufferings are given for the furtherance of the gospel. In the midst of a trial God will ask, “Whatever the outcome of this trial, will you still purpose in your heart to love, honor and serve me?” Our challenge is to pray, “Have thine own way, Lord…thou art the potter I am the clay.”
When the world calls evil good and good evil, when the politically correct forbid to speak the truth of the Gospel in public places, aquit ye like men, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. As Peter and John said in Acts 4:19-20 “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard.”
When our good is evil spoken of, the proof of a man of God is his response in the face of a crisis. As Peter and the other apostles said in Acts 5, “we should obey God rather than men.”
A man of God is not a man of God because of disappointments in life. He’s a man of God because his identity is in Christ. A man of God is God’s man. It’s not who we are…it’s whose we are. Ye are of God little children and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
May we pray like David, “Blot out my transgressions and create in me a new heart O Lord.” In the body of Christ we’re either a weight and a hinderance or we run with patience the race that is set before us. Encumberances handicap the movement of the truth of the Word. The solution is to pray, “have thine own way Lord, remove my transgressions and the weight that so easily besets us and create in me a new heart.”
Paul was determined to go to Jerusalem to spread the gospel despite prophecies of hardships and tribulation. Paul’s response was, “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain”….to be useful to Christ we must die to self in order to live for him.
What will it cost to be used of God? Our attitude must be, “Lord come help yourself to my life…take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee.” More of thee and less of me. God will teach us humility. This lesson may come at a high price.
The story of Joseph is the story of God teaching His man a lesson in humility. Joseph was his father’s favorite son. He told his brothers about a dream where they were bowing down to him. Joseph’s brothers were so jealous that they sold him to a caravan who sold him into slavery in Egypt. As a slave in the house of a rich Egyptian named Potiphar, Joseph found favor and became Potiphar’s chief administrator. When Pothphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph, he ran from her but she took hold of his coat and stripped it from him. Potiphar’s wife showed her husband Joseph’s coat and accused him of raping her. He was thrown into prison for many years. In prison, Joseph interpreted the dreams of the Pharaoh’s baker and his cup bearer. After many years Pharaoh had a dream that troubled him and he called his wise men to interpret his dream. No one could interpret Pharaoh’s dream. Then his cup bearer remembered that when he was in prison, a prisoner named Joseph had interpreted his dream many years before. Joseph was summoned to the palace and brought before Pharaoh. Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream and was made prime minister of Egypt. What men meant for evil, God meant for good.
When Jesus calls a man, he bids him, “come and die.” We must die to self in order to live for him. To be used of God, compared to the love we have for God we must “hate” all else. Therefore Jesus said in Luke 14:26, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” In order to be useful to God we must approach the cross of Christ on his terms, not ours.
Beware of the man who recruits you because of your usefulness. God doesn’t want our ambition to achieve something high and great for ourselves. To seek great things for God’s glory, we must be willing to praise, love, and serve him through the storms of life. Our purpose in all things is that we should be to the praise of the glory of his grace.
To be used of God may we pray like Saint Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Many we ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace,
Your brother in Christ,
Michael