Monday, November 16, 2009

Devotional 161109

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good afternoon. Our office had power outage this morning. As a result, we took advantage of time to clean up the office from inside out. If you have followed my blog, you know that a group of brothers and sisters had already helped me clean up on Saturday. But there are still a lot of touch-up works to do afterward. Since we can’t do anything without electric power, we just took advantage of the time to do some labor of love. It was a good exercise; I hope I did not hurt my back because it feels uncomfortable now.

"Whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). The great marvel of the Incarnation slips into ordinary childhood's life; the great marvel of the Transfiguration vanishes in the devil-possessed valley; the glory of the Resurrection descends into a breakfast on the sea-shore. This is not an anti-climax, but a great revelation of God.

The tendency is to look for the marvelous in our experience; we mistake the sense of the heroic for being heroes. It is one thing to go through a crisis grandly, but another thing to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, no one paying the remotest attention to us. If we do not want mediaeval haloes, we want something that will make people say - What a wonderful man of prayer he is! What a pious devoted woman she is! If you are rightly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the sublime height where no one ever thinks of noticing you; all that is noticed is that the power of God comes through you all the time.

Oh, I have had a wonderful call from God! It takes Almighty God Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty to the glory of God. It takes God's Spirit in us to make us so absolutely humanly His that we are utterly unnoticeable. The test of the life of a saint is not success, but faithfulness in human life as it actually is. We will set up success in Christian work as the aim; the aim is to manifest the glory of God in human life, to live the life hid with Christ in God in human conditions. Our human relationships are the actual conditions in which the ideal life of God is to be exhibited.

In our fellowship time with one another, we let the glory of God shine through this humble vessel of ours. If we claim to have any spiritual quality or devotion to God, we will be tested in our relationship with the saints. It is within the perfect plan of God that our spirituality inter-connected with those who are part of the family of God. That’s why Paul prayed that “you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:116b-18). Do not underestimate the power of fellowship, no matter how good or bad the program may be. Commit not just to enjoy the program but to exercise your gifts and love from Christ for one another.

Love you in Christ,
Lawrence

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