Are You Willing To Be a Doormat?

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"But even if I am poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you."      (Philippians 2: 17)

Being a doormat is simply not on my priority list, and I doubt it is on yours either.  In this day and age, no one encourages you to be doormat....ever.  The prevailing thought in our culture is that it is never good to be a doormat for anyone.  We are taught that we should never let anyone walk over us. To do so is to impede our own person-hood, lowering us beneath another.  On the surface this may seem right to you because being a doormat always has had a negative connotation; however, this mindset stands in direct opposition to the Word of God. 

In My Utmost For His Highest yesterday, this verse (above) and Oswald Chambers's wisdom is used to counter the philosophy that the world offers us.  In the devotional we see Paul speaking of being "poured out like a drink offering" over another person's ministry, and gladly rejoicing in being able to do so.  It is so important to see that Paul was drawing no attention to himself.  On the contrary, he is pointing to the ministry of the Philippians, and rejoicing in their accomplishments for the gospel.  He knew that his part in their ministry was necessary, but not to be elevated higher than what they themselves were accomplishing for Jesus' sake.  This is humility; this is allowing someone to walk over you, and even beyond you, to fulfill their calling.

Too often, though, we struggle with our pride and flesh when someone else is flourishing. We don't like sharing the lime-light with others; we prefer to have it all for ourselves, mostly. But this would never be said of the humbled believer who desires to be poured out as a drink offering over someone else's sacrifice and service.  Like Paul, we must learn to be the simple wine that is poured over the choice piece of meat that is the main sacrifice.  We must learn to be the lesser in light of the greater.  That is the true nature of the drink offering.  We simply cover the sacrifice before it is burned up.  

So, are you willing to be the doormat of another's ministry?   Are you willing to simply be a "drop in the [already filled] bucket"?  Are you ready to be such an insignificant part that no one will remember you even if they call to mind the ones you served.  Will you simply stoop to serve them and then slip quietly into the shadows without so much as a second of attention drawn to yourself?  It is humbling just to consider such a question.  And its consideration likely will show you the amount of pride that dwells within your flesh.

Persecuting Jesus

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"Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?   (Acts 26:14)






What?  ME?  Persecute Jesus?  I would never persecute my Lord!

That is what my heart wants to scream.  And yet I am guilty of just that . . .  persecuting my Lord and Savior.  And it grieves me to consider the number of times that I have.  Today, while reading My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers, great conviction came upon me as the reality of persecuting Jesus settled deeply within me. God used Chambers, in today's devotional, to bring this conviction upon me with just two words:  Stubbornness and Self-will.

No matter how hard I try to deny it, it is my own stubbornness and self-will that are the tools I use to persecute Jesus.  They are a sword in His side, and they wound the very Spirit He sent to me to help me overcome these sins.  My stubbornness and self-will is what causes me to do my own thing, my own way, and as I see fit.  Chambers argues that this attitude flows from a inner desire for self-respect,  and I think that the respect of others could also be at the root of the sin. When I walk according to this sinful desire,  I dethrone Jesus from His rightful place in my life,  and I set myself squarely upon it.  Whether I like it or not, this is persecution of the One who saved my soul.  

Why is it so much easier to see this kind of persecution of Jesus in Saul than it is to see in myself?  His seems so blatant; mine, much more nebulous.  But there is no difference between him and me.  No difference at all.

And here is another layer to the problem of my stubbornness and self-will.  I am a teacher of the Word.  I espouse its wisdom to you, while at the same time betraying the things I teach. Ultimately, that means I betray the Living Word - Jesus - by not following through myself in the things I teach others.  This reveals that I am not as closely connected to Jesus as I would love everyone else to be.  In the end, that is nothing but hypocrisy.

So, here I am.  I am standing on my own road to Damascus, and Jesus says the same thing to me, now.   Why are you persecuting Me, My precious child?   I have no answer.  Just a heart that feels crushed by the weight of my sin.

PRAYER

Lord, forgive my sin.  Pull me to my feet, that I might stand again, go forward in ministry, and experience a renewed spirit.  May the wounds with which I have afflicted You be healed as I humble myself before you.  In my humility come to me and transform my stubbornness into a pliable follower.  Come and replace my self-will with submission to Your every desire for me. I surrender to You.

The Waste of Worry

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"Don't worry about your life..."    (Matthew 6:25)

Worry....we all do it from time to time, some of us more than others.  But it is always the enemy of trust in God, every time we fall prey to it.  Whether we are worried about our family, our finances, our material goods, our education, our health, or any other of the many things we tend to worry about, we are always making a decision to not trust God.  And the truth is this:  Something to worry about will always be seeking to attach itself to our thoughts. Always.  And like a flood.

So what are we supposed to do?  Good question....

I have noticed in my own life that the best answer to the question and solution to the problem of worrying begins with taking the worrisome thought captive.  When I am able to capture the thought and look at it for a moment, then I am faced with a choice.  Secondly, because emotions can play such a huge role in what I will choose, then I have to crucify my feelings about the circumstances I am worrying about.   They have to be dead to me or I will choose to continue worrying because I can't get away from how I feel about it.  Here is an example:

Let's say that you have just had to take a cut in pay.  You are worried about whether or not you will be able to pay your bills.  This thought then creates feelings of fear, maybe even anger over why you had to take that pay cut.  If you can not set your feelings of fear or anger aside, then you have taken the thought of worry captive, but it won't last long.  I you do set your personal feelings aside, though, you can take worried thoughts captive, and look at God instead of yourself.  

Having captured the thought of worry, and then setting yourself aside, you will be able to look up, see God, and begin a dialogue with Him.  Your heart will then be enabled to hear what He will have to say to you.   With focus on who God is and your relationship with Him, the Holy Spirit will begin to "raise a standard against" your worry.  

Oswald Chambers says it this way:  

"Common sense shouts loud and says, 'That is absurd, I must consider how I am going to live, I must consider what I am going to eat and drink.' Jesus says you must not."

To claim that "you must" try and think it all through is to say to Jesus that He surely does not understand your circumstances.  Oh how we forget that He understands them -- and their godly purposes in our lives -- far better than we do!  Worry is of no value to the difficult circumstances of life. Worry is nothing but a waste, if we truly trust our God.

PRAYER

Oh, Jesus, how often I have worried when I should have been fixing my gaze on You!  How my flesh wants to think it all through and try to figure out how I am going to fix the circumstance.  How often I haven't even seen You in the circumstance, waiting patiently for me to seek You out.   There is nothing in this life that I need worry about, but just to trust in Your plan for me.  Forgive my self-sufficiency, and forgive my nature of learning so slowly.  

 

Making MORE Room For Jesus

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As I was reading My Utmost For His Highest this morning, I was struck by Oswald Chamber's title for the devotion:   "Leave Room For God".  His guiding verse was Galatians 1:15 which says,

"By when it pleased God...."

Chambers' point in the devotional was that we often look for God to come in a certain way, a particular way, a way that often holds no element of surprise.  Yet God always shows up on His own time schedule and in His own way.  Because of that we should live in a state of expectancy, ready for Him at any time.  That was the very, surprising moment when the Spirit broke free from the page I was reading and spoke directly to me.  Though He used the devotional to get me to listen, what He said had less to do with the devotional and everything to do with my own sinful heart.  It was a completely unexpected visit from Him...

He began to speak to me about the truth that I do not personally practice living in a state of expectancy when it comes to Him just showing up.  He spoke to my heart about me elbowing Him out of my day as I push through on my own.  And when He had my full attention,  He revealed my real problem to me. Look at the image on this blog.  It captures the essence of what the Spirit told me.

You see, my problem is not that I haven't made room for God in my life.  Oh, I surely have. I came to Jesus in need of a Savior when I was a young teenager, and the moment I prayed a prayer about that very need, the Holy Spirit came to live in my heart. It is the home of the Holy Spirit now.  But my spiritual heart has many chambers, and the Spirit does not have full control and access to every dark corner, every back passageway, every single room.  Sadly, I have only made room for Him to the degree that I desire for Him to become the Sole Master of my life.

In many ways He has control of my spiritual journey, but in other areas I have crammed Him tightly into a dark closet in the attic.  I keep Him there because I want to do things my way;  I want to explode in anger when I feel like it; I want to be negative instead of finding the positive points; I want to be listened to more than I want to listen; I want to continue to claim my rights when I have none;  I want to be lord and master and retain some control of my life. In those areas of my life I have certainly made room for Jesus, I just don't let Him into  the whole house.  I keep Him tucked away in an obscure closet where He can have no impact on my life.

I see the error of my actions, and I know what the Word tells me about my condition, but too often I do nothing about it.  Truthfully, other than surrendering to the work of the Spirit in me, there is nothing I can do about it.  My strength and self-will can never be able to bring about the heart change that I need.  It is not me who needs to take control of my heart; it is the Spirit of Christ who must.  But first, I must give over control and authority by surrender to the God of my heart.  And as I do, I know that transformation will occur.  I can expect it!

PRAYER

Holy Spirit of Jesus the Son, You came into me for one reason.  You came to live the life of Christ out of me.  You came to have full reign of my entire heart.  But I have kept You locked away in the attic on so many occasions.  Those times You were robbed of the chance for righteous, peace, and joy to come forth.  And I have reaped what I sowed myself because I was in control of me.  Too many times You have begged to be set free from Your closet in my heart, times when You wanted me to do the right thing, and I didn't; times You wanted me to let You control my emotions and unkind words, but I chose to react in an ugly manner; times when You wanted me to keep my opinions to myself, but I let them fly out of me all the same. These are just a few of the times You have been peering out at me from Your jail cell in my heart.  Forgive me, Holy Spirit.  Oh how I want to get this right!  Come out your cell to me as I come to You.  I want You to have more and more control of my life as I make more, much more, room for You.  May it please You, God, to come to my rescue, right now.   I am expecting it, as I open the door for You to come forth!  Come out and transform and convert me as You please.

The Backbone of Ministry

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"I have appeared to you for this purpose."     (Acts 26:16)

"I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."    (Acts 26: 19)

God called a most unlikely person to become a witness to the Israelites and the Gentiles. He called a man named Saul, a man who had been persecuting Jesus personally and His followers.  God's call was clear.  Saul would be renamed Paul, and he would become a servant and a witness of all he had seen and to what God would eventually reveal to to him.  But it was up to Paul to obey the God of the calling.

Ministry is not the backbone of the church today; obedience out of a personal relationship to God is!   You can assume any role in the church-- an elder, a teacher, a worker, a leader, etc--but if you are not in an ever-growing and deepening relationship with God, your service could be done by anyone.  Even by those who do not have a relationship with the Almighty.

God is not interested in what you think you can do for Him.  He is looking for believers who walk daily with Him.  Out of your relationship with God your obedience flows; and out of your obedience to Him your ministry to others flows.   Obedience to God is a far-greater calling than any position in ministry.  Obedience to God is what we all should be aiming at. Yet, it will never be achieved without placing yourself under the overmastering of the Lord.  Oswald Chambers puts it this way:

"Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine."

That is exactly how Paul thought about God's purpose for Him.  It could only be achieved if he would simply allow God to be the director of his life and purpose.  Paul's job was to draw closer and closer to God, growing in intimacy with Him, and out of the relationship, ministry would follow.

The same is just as true today.  When I go off in my own power and leading, I am doomed in ministry.  But when I humbly submit myself to hear all that God has planned for me, and simply believe Him, then the ministry that flows from me will truly be His.  It will be the Spirit in me doing the works out of me.  My daily relationship with God is the backbone of God's will and purpose through me.  My obedience to God is the fruit of time spend in His word and with Him.  This is what supports the ministry given to me to do.  I can't and won't work the other way around.

PRAYER

Lord, help me get this right!  Help me to keep my eyes fixed on the true goal:  to be more and more intimate with You, trusting You and Your plan, not mine.  The ministry and its results I leave completely in Your capable hands.  And I cling to Your hand, trusting You alone to take me on the journey to reach others for Your glory.

Whose Face Do You See in the Mirror?

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"We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit."   (2 Corinthians 3:18)

At some point in every day we all have opportunity to look into a mirror, and we know the person well with the one we see looking back at us.  But when we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we join a group of people who now have "unveiled faces".  One might wonder what that even means, but the definition is truly simple.  Having an unveiled face is not something we have to achieve, but it is something that has already been done for us the very instant we believed that Jesus is who He says He is,  our Messiah, our Savior and Lord, and our soon-coming King.  But we do have something we are to do since we already have an unveiled face.  We are to be continually looking at  the glory of the Lord.  We are called to look at the glory of the Lord with much more than a casual glance, though.  We are to give Him careful and thorough study if we are going to be transformed to look like Him. 

This transformation is a progressive sort of change in us.  It does not happen in an instant; it takes us from the glory of our conversion to the glorification that will come when we reach heaven--from glory to glory.  This progressive transformation will have but one purpose:  to change us, from the inside out, into the image of God.  The more we allow this process to happen, the more we (and everybody else, as well) will see the image of Jesus in us.  It will be Him looking back at us when we look in the mirror.   It will be Him in us looking back at those we come in contact with.  When we come to this point in the glory to glory journey, we will be living out the fulfillment of the promise of God found in Romans 8:29, which says:

"For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son..."

Bit by tiny bit, we all, who are in Christ, are being conformed to the image of the Savior. Slowly the fruit of the Spirit is being born out of us as His work is being done deep down inside of us.  Slowly, but very surely, the one I see in the mirror every morning is becoming more and more like Christ.  And the transformation in me can clearly be seen in me as I reflect the light of Christ to them.  

PRAYER

Holy Spirit, you are welcome in me.  I surrender to the work You were sent to do in my heart. Show me the places where I am hindering Your process of transformation in me.  I want to get out of Your way, so that one day I will look far more like Jesus than myself.  Leave no part of me untouched by Your holy fire.  Burn away everything that does not look like Jesus. I could never do this work myself.  No guilt, willpower, or coercion done in my own strength will ever be able to produce godly fruit in me.  I only need to bow to You and Your work in me, and the image of Christ will come forth from me.  Come!  Do all of Your work in me that is ordained for my life today.  Then come again tomorrow and the next and the next and every day until I am completely transformed and completely Yours. 

In Everything, Look to God

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"Turn to Me and be saved . . . For I am God and there is no other."     (Isaiah 45:22)

Just what is it that I am looking at most of the time?  I know that I am not looking up as much as I ought to be, that is for sure.  Yes, when there is some kind of an issue, I typically look for God in it.  And when I am studying or teaching or counseling, I am prone to turn my focus to God, as well.  But when everything is just fine, and I am just moving through the day, I find myself looking in one of two directions:  looking around me or at myself.  I rarely will be caught looking to God in the "everyday stuff" of life.

When things are simply going well, I seem to fall into the trap of just living life without turning my eyes upward.  I forget to be thankful and grateful for the simplest of things because I am not seeing God in them.  I am not "praying always".  I am not meditating on the Word of the day.  I am just moving from one thing to the next most of the time.  

It is a concentration issue.  I am very good at concentration.  I am a tunnel-vision kind of gal. When I work on anything, my focus is only on that thing, and I do not hear or see much of anything else.  This can be a very good trait; however, when it comes to my relationship with God there are plenty of opportunities throughout the day that are open doors for me to "multi-task".  By that I mean that I can be focusing on going and getting my groceries while glancing up to God at the same time.  But I rarely think to do that.

Oswald Chambers says this in his devotional today:

The teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is, in effect--'Narrow all your interest until the attitude of mind and heart and body is concentration on Jesus Christ.'   "Look unto Me."

That's just my problem.  My life is not consistently narrowed to just one focus;  my focus takes me in many directions.  Yet, I have seen in those rare moments when I bring only Jesus into focus in the middle of my day, I find my salvation to be very real and all else fades away.  It doesn't matter what I might be looking at--problems, pressures, frustrations, or nothing at all--it simply vanishes when I look up. 

"No matter if there are a hundred and one thing that press, resolutely exclude them all and look to Him.  'Turn to Me,' and salvation is, the moment you look."

PRAYER

Sweet Jesus, how often my eyes are looking at everything around me but You.  I want to know what it is like to keep my eyes looking up to You throughout a whole day.  I am quite convinced that it could radically change the way I move through my days.  But I know that this will not happen just because I want it to.  I need Your help, Holy Spirit, to prompt me to look up more, until it becomes my habit.  Come and help me.  I know this is the right way. Help me to walk in Your way.