"Two things I ask of you, O LORD;
do not refuse me before I die:
Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
(Proverbs 30:7-9)
Life is difficult. If we go for being spiritual superheroes we can crash and burn, we become arrogant and say, "Who is the LORD?" forgetting how much we need him; before long we find we don't match up to the high standard we boasted for ourselves. The alternative is that our lives fall into a pit of mess, we can do nothing to sort ourselves out. I have known people who literally tried to be something and then found themselves with nothing, literally stealing in order to keep going.
A balance needs to be found, and the secret is in the first request. Don't be false! It seems so simple but what we need is to be humble and choose that simplicity of needing Jesus. The words "daily bread" carry a spiritual significance because they also mean 'bread of life': the words Jesus used to describe himself. ("Give us this day our daily bread.") We need to find reality, the only true balance between being nothing and pretending to be something. Or you really might find that your life is destroyed and that you die.
Life has been gutting in the last couple of days. I've seen young men I love fall into ruin because there has been no platform to build their lives on, they chose to lie about who they are rather than cope with reality and it has crushed them.
I appreciate this post. It's so easy to want more out of this life. I'm reading a book right now about a woman who had Christ at the center of her life when she was poor, and then her husband got The Big Promotion, and Christ was eased out of their life. I don't ever want that to happen to me. I'm not rich, so it's easy to say if I were rich I wouldn't lose Christ, but I doubt people start out consciously saying "I've got loot, peace out Jesus". The devil is conniving, he knows if he works on us obviously all at once we can resist, so he takes his time.
ReplyDeleteI know we've got some heroes around us at the moment - even if for one or two - or one! - it looks like they'll never quite get there. I think we've heard the hero-maker. I think their destiny is the Lord's. I believe!
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