humble

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I have been on the road the past two weeks and it’s been tough to find the time for a blog.

Right now my daughter’s mother-in-law and I have been trading off  driving about every 3 hours. We went to my daughter Rachel’s graduation from Purdue University at IUPUI in Mechanical Engineering.

We are moving her and her husband back to the Seattle area so she can start her new job. Anyway, as Jane, her mother-in-law, and I trek cross-country, I am reminded of past road trips to visit family and moving around with my husband’s career. America is big and the land is vast and diverse with its people. But it’s also a reminder of a how much bigger world we live in beyond this nation. Then conversely, I start to think about how really small this planet earth is within a huge universe and then my perspective changes to  how small we truly are and how very big God really is. That is reality.

That our big God cared to give us such a unique terrain to live on and with everything we need to survive on it amazes me. He also made people so unique with their different cultures, traditions, etc. What I love about God is that He believes that each and every one of us is so important that He gave us a free-will and opportunity to explore and find Him while here on this planet. People matter to God and they should matter to us.  Every time I look at another human being, I remind myself, this is a child of God, regardless of whether they love or serve Him.  Each one of us comes with our own stories: troubles and joys. And these stories that we are made of is what makes us unique. And yet we are significant to Him in all our ways, “what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you should care for him?” (Psalm 8:4, ESV)

Keeping a right perspective helps keep us humble and from thinking we are bigger than we are. No, we are very small, but we are very important to the God who created us. A narrowed focus can keep us stuck; thinking beyond ourselves reminds us there is more to life than just us here on this earth. When we can reach past ourselves to others around us, it pulls us out of our inward focus to do something good for someone else, to learn their story, to learn to appreciate and love them right where they are at. All of the sudden, our problems seem smaller.Travel Crazy Horse

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This is a tough topic to consider and as well to live out. There is a fine line in our faith of being broken and living victorious, but may I suggest that if you are living “broken” in Christ, you are victorious.

There is a brokenness of our will that says, I need you God. I can’t do it my way anymore; I agree with you God that I am a sinner and I need your salvation. And when you first come to salvation in Christ this is where you need to be. But after you have been saved, there is still the process of being broken. It comes through the “working out of your salvation”; a continual dependency on the grace of God while living out the rest of your life here on earth. “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Galatians 2:21, NIV We need to learn daily how to submit our will.

There is a type of humility that comes when we keep an accurate picture in our hearts and minds that we can’t live a moment without the grace of Christ in our lives. The moment we begin to think we can do anything without Him is the moment we need to realize that pride and self have just entered stage-left. As a result, we will reap natural consequences when we take our eyes off of Christ to take center stage. Every breath we have breathed and every next breath that we take has been given by Him. It is vital for us to always keep a sober view of ourselves and keep a close watch on how we live our lives. We do this by keeping a close comparison of our lives to the truth of Scripture and on Christ Jesus, not by comparing ourselves to others or what the world says we need or whom we should look like. Jesus Christ and His Word are our plumb lines.

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51:17, NIV

God wants us broken because this is where He does His best work through our lives: when we have a broken spirit. He detests the proud. Out of brokenness comes new life. We have never “arrived” as Christians here on this earth. Our wills will continue to battle with us here in this life, until we have our new heavenly bodies. We must continually “die to self” to allow the will of God in our lives. Don’t ever be too far from brokenness, if at all.

A daily living out of your life in brokenness says, “I am so grateful, Savior, that not a day, not a single moment goes by without it being by Your grace. Thank you Jesus.”

We can rejoice in that!

 

George Barna has just started a blog series on brokenness that you might find interesting:

http://www.georgebarna.com/2012/04/the-maximum-faith-series-article-1-the-importance-of-brokenness/