4/16/16
God makes use of everything….everything that happens to us can become a springboard that God will use. As I have shared with students and others through the years, however, sometimes God uses it as a good example…Other times he uses it as a horrible warning. Which one will our life’s witness be for others?
I was told recently by someone that the Lord had made it clear that what she’d been through would be used to help others. Yet as I asked her about her life, it is a wreck. In addition to a string of disasters- relationally, legally, financially, emotionally and more, she knows little or nothing about the Bible or God’s character. I told her that it is difficult to give others what one doesn’t have herself. When I said that God will use one’s life either as a good example or as a horrible warning, she was suddenly quiet. She then said that her life and testimony are going to be a good example. I pray that she is serious and determined to allow God to redeem it so that it becomes a light for others. It will not be by the effort of her own volition, though. It will only happen as the result of surrender in obedience to the will of God.
Each of us has probably heard testimonies that are more of a witness to how strong the individual is and how much tragedy and pain she’s survived instead of to the glory of God, how great he is and how he has redeemed one’s life. The lack of humility and the self-aggrandizement brings to mind the story of the publican and the pharisee..Luke 18:9-14 (NIV)
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”