HUMAN / Humility - Rest

Sometimes I can't let the Lord lead me in making a good decision without thinking about the praise I received for it afterwards. Today was the 27th, and Proverbs 27:21 is "Fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but a man is tested by being praised." I've spoken here about this verse before, but it came to heart once again today after the Lord blessed me with a creative idea for noon-day prayer. It wasn't cutting-edge or anything, but it felt Spirit-led. Normally people don't cry when I organize the prayer...but today God drew some people to tears it seems. Not that crying is a symbol of spiritual effectiveness...it's not...In fact, holy people don't cry anymore than unholy people (by this I am comparing Christ followers and non Christ followers - Colossians 1...holy and blameless...). To be honest, I think that Christ followers can sometimes end up crying and mourning a whole lot less because they are expending themselves emotionally on others on a continual basis. When one doesn't take the adequate time to recharge and becomes emotionally drained, they often are too sympathetically spent to cry. So many believers have lives beyond understanding in terms of the immense difficulties which they face, but they can't cry/mourn/grieve for themselves because they aren't self-focused. This is good, most of the time, but it is not always good. When one is never focused on their own welfare...spiritual state...they can often because delusional as to their mortality...that is, they don't recognize the fact that their finite, human, and vulnerable. This is why we are a Body together and not alone. This is why Christ is the head and we are not. Another factor relating to this is that as believers, we can often not take enough time to reflect on our relationship with our Lord in the midst of the world in which He's placed us. We ought to. If we don't, it's hard to be given a "burden" for the lost. If you aren't people oriented because of Christ and then people...then you don't understand the great commission. It's first about loving God through obedience to His command and then out of love for him, loving others through such a mission. This can be distorted, however, when we consider the mission to be about, first, loving God, and then "getting the job done." When people are no longer the focus, and the commission becomes a job...it's no longer a burden of love which compels us.

Anyway, this all came about because someone was teary-eyed while they were engaging in prayer today...and then later on, another of the brethren thanked me for the noon-day prayer...this is all coming on the tail-end of a dream I had last night in which I was praised by a friend to a friend...Please pray for me as I am seeking God's teaching through these events. May they be specific prayers to which the Lord illumines your spirit, and not the vagaries which hinder us from being able to see His responses clearly.

God bless,

("Pictures" coming soon)