Text: Galatians 1:18-2:10
Prayer Pointers:
To know God daily
For those far away from God
For all who work daily under the sun
A recent book describes how our world has been flattened into two dimensions, spiritually speaking. There is no space for God to act. All that happens, happens by “natural” processes, and anything that you or I experience as “spiritual” is just the result of the working out of those natural processes that prime us to think that there is more to the world than there really is. Law, love, grace, hope and any other spiritual word or phrase you can think of are empty cups and it is upon each of us to fill those cups.
This way of thinking leads us into a very dangerous situation. As we grow to believe that it is our own efforts that make “meaning” in the world, our pride grows as well. And why not? We make our own worlds, we make our own meaning, we make our own way in life. We are makers, creators, rulers—and proud! Of course, like every ruler of every age, we do not like our will to be thwarted, our pride to be punctured.
Paul is often accused of pride, but his pride tends toward pride in God and what God has done for him rather than pride in his own creating, his own making. I think the reason is because Paul knew he was no creator—he was a killer. Paul was no maker; he was a murderer, and it was only by God’s grace that Paul’s life was turned. Paul became in his Lord’s hand a means to reach all those men and women whose cups of life were bone dry from pouring them out over and over for petty gods who could do nothing. Paul found that the Lord Jesus filled his cup, filled it faithfully with “living water.”
So Paul boasted in the Lord, and took on those of reputation in the Church, and delighted in his role in spreading the Gospel because in all of it the God who takes action in our lives was glorified.
May your day be grace-filled ~ Pr. Dave Brooks