This last week has been a wonderful week for me in the sense that I know that God has not given up on me. This is a good thing seeing that I attempted to be God this last week. In His grace, God has given me a neat opportunity for ministry in a certain person’s life. At times in this relationship, I have really been impressed with myself in the way that I handled a particular situation. Or, at other times, I have admired my “selfless love and care.” Although I have given God credit for the increase, I now realize now that I was seeing the situation as a work that I was doing, not God.
Well, God, through some unusual and specific circumstances, chose to remove this particular opportunity of ministry from me. The removal happened because of the consequences of an action of a third party. In my pride I began to exalt myself and criticize the third party for what they had done. I thought that they didn’t understand ministry like I did, or else they would not have done such a thing. Anger was pouring out in my hearts toward them, only, it was not righteous.
After thinking about it and be counseled about it, I realized that I was thinking that God needed me to do His work in this person’s life. No one else could do what I could do. I was the chosen vessel to minister to their life. However, – ding, ding, ding – there are no vacancies in the Trinity. God is still God, and I am finite man. He is the Master Potter and I am the clay. He is Sovereign; I am subservient. I am in every case the lowest of the low. God reigns above all. He alone is God. If He chooses to remove someone to whom I have been ministering from my influence, He has every right to do that. God is more jealous for His glory than I could fathom. He arrests men’s hearts so that they might be amazed at the God of the universe. He alone does this.
God in His mercy has shown me His grace and love both in my life and in the life of this one to whom I had been ministering. What a kind and faithful God! It is times like this when I feel that I understand the truth of the Gospel of Christ, but then He places me on the testing ground to see what God’s great Gospel looks like through my life. Many times His mercy looks like misery, His grace looks earned, and His lovingkindness looks temporary. But God still uses me to do His work, to carry His Good News. And then I am reminded that it is not my acts of faithfulness and righteousness that God depends on, it is the Gospel at work in my life. He chooses me and uses me because of the imputation of Christ’s completed work on my behalf. The same Gospel that God gave me to minister in another life is at work in my life too. The Wisdom of the Lord is wonderful.
So here I am, not God, but an heir of the riches of God because of the work of Christ imputed on my behalf.
this is “grace at work”
How often our disappointments are His appointments. Often we believe that God would have us minister in one way, that which conveniently works into our schedule without significant preparation, and it is right that we should. But God has His higher way to cause us to not reconsider Him, but to further conform us to the image of His Son. He may in that be rounding out His education for you (don’t think your degree from college was the end, it is just the beginning) in the Matthew 25:34-40 101 course.
Dad
September 25th, 2007