Taking Stock
In this last week of 2011, my mind is turning words the quickly approaching new year. It’s good to take stock before moving forward.
Consider what Brennan Manning said in his book on trusting God a few years ago. He was told by a friend that he didn’t need any new information from God. What he needed to do most was to trust in what God has already told him. It stopped him in his tracks.
I’ve often told people who come to me for counseling, “My job is to tell you what you already know–what God has already told you in the midst all this.” Then we laugh about it because the joke’s on us.
So, for me, taking stock involves reminding myself once more about what God has already told me and trusting Him once again in those things.
He’s already told me to lead my own soul, family and church family in being honest, rather in being right. Humble self-examination in God’s sight leads to a better knowledge of God and my own feeble self in light of His perfections–a more honest self-appraisal and, ironically, a deeper experience of God’s compassion and a more desperate dependence on His grace. Which is then given away to others.
Families that are radically honest will grow in joy and freedom under His grace; families that are built on arguments over who’s right and who’s wrong, won’t experience grace and will sink down into rebellion or heartless conformity.
He’s already told me to build my personal and church family on His “all condition satisfying” love, not on conditional human approval. Whether I or they or you approve or don’t approve isn’t really important. Receiving and responding to God’s grace-giving love is most important.
Instead of vainly attempting to earn the approval of impossible to please, easy to offend people, I live under His smile and can extend free grace to other, equally undeserving people and watch that grace change lives.
He’s already told me to let go of control and to come to terms with my utter powerlessness. The two areas that tempt me to worry the most–finances and conflicts–are the two areas I most need to daily surrender to His good control and trust Him for the results.
Hatred is not the opposite of love–control is. Losing my self-ordered life for His sake is what makes it possible to find the God-received life. Too often I have allowed stress and worry over unmanageable things to crowd out spontaneity and creativity in loving others–to their detriment and to mine as well.
He’s already told me to let go of indispensability, and to get smaller and more lowly in my serving. Success isn’t so much measured in popularity or wealth, but in who I train and pour my life into and will carry on His work after I’ve gone. Equipping and multiplication are at the heart of Jesus’ model, not binding people to myself in perpetual dependency and enabling over-helping.
It’s humbling to realize just how temporary and replaceable and unnecessary I really am…and deeply freeing. People who got the big headlines 100 years ago for great achievements or who were lauded by the masses back then are pretty much forgotten today. But all those who personally invested in others everything Christ invested in them live on and their reward follows them into eternity.
Diminishing and letting others rise and attempt more and do more and then grow–and who will initiate the same pattern with others– is how His kingdom expands. doing all the ministry for others and receiving all the praise from the passive many and validating the need to be needed–isn’t.
So, as I think about 2012, my resolve is to trust God more in those areas hardest for me to trust, and take that same energy and invest it in others who will be here long after I’m gone. But first I will need to diligently receive undeserved grace from Christ in these most broken areas and allow Him to love me there over and over again. Then I’ll have something great to offer others from Him. With these thoughts in mind, I say…
Good-bye, 2011! Welcome, 2012!
