From experience, Christians take two major tests. I speak of two when God would wish I would get it that there are 200? 2000? Yet, I address two which are challenges enough.
One is dealing with critics. The other is reaching to the poor. We cannot hide from these as they are flood lights to our hearts.
Criticism has been my worst nightmare. I hate it, despise it, wish it would die, and then I really hate it. But it is most valuable. Criticism keeps us from exalting ourselves...II Cor. 12:5-9. Criticism carries little messages which cut us down to true size. No one in kingdom work can afford to be C-free. I hate being cut down. Cut downs kill a person...and that's the intent of God.
Criticism is spiritual boot camp where you eventually surrender your assumed powers to the One who can get you through life...for you discover your own have no endurance.
And then our attitudes toward the poor are revealing. This is more than handing out money and developing methods to help the needy. It is talking with them, sitting with them, loving them. The poor are in need of much more than dollar bills. They need another set of eyes to look at them coupled with a set of ears to listen to them. They are valuable people with important names like Herb or Juanita or Curly or Shelley.
The poor often carry riches for the church which God knows we desperately need. They may not know our songs nor our formulas for having done church. We have one young man right now who lies down in the pew during services...usually during my sermon. (So what's different than those asleep upright?). Yet, this man is welcomed and it was our shepherds who led the way in saying....Hey, he's not hurting anybody and he thinks he's home among family.
Kingdom life is a matter of the heart. We need criticism as God irons the wrinkles out of us inch by inch and day by day. We need to touch the poor with our eyes and our arms.
These are real big tests. Courses like these lead us to getting our Master's degree.
2 comments:
Thank you, Terry. On target,as usual. Reading your observations on the poor reminded me of something I heard Shane Claiborne say in an interview, "The greatest tragedy of Christianity is not that we don't care for the poor, it is that we don't know the poor". Thank you once again for your challenging words.
"getting our Master's degree" Excellent!
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