We desire other people to think about us as we wish them to think, but we also desire to think about ourselves as we wish to think. We tend to deceive ourselves about ourselves. We all have “secret faults” that are “hidden” from our own sight.
Between actively growing toward God and actively growing away from Him, there is no safe middle course. To do nothing is to deteriorate. Either we choose to seek God diligently or our hearts will fall into darkness, decay, and finally . . . death.
Sacrifice is measured in terms of what it costs us personally, not the degree to which someone else might have been able to afford the loss. Strictly speaking, a sacrifice is the relinquishing of something we could hardly afford to do without.
There is an important sense in which we are strongest at our most painful moments of weakness. At least this much is true: our greatest opportunities to grow in strength come when we respond to reminders of our weakness with humility and honesty.
When the dark clouds roll in, that is when people of real faith continue to honor God. When it must meet some significant test, that is when trust means the most. The value of faith doesn’t become obvious until there is some doubt to be dealt with.
In the grip of intense suffering, Job found that the help of his best-intentioned friends only made the pain more perplexing. The lessons to be learned during God’s silence could only be learned in solitude. For a while, Job had to be left alone.
Until we despair concerning our own “gods, the work of men’s hands,” we are hardly ready to appreciate the true God. If we’re not willing to let go of the created things we’ve been clinging to, we’re not ready to receive what the Creator has for us.
From the Greek for “lawlessness,” “anomie” has come into popular usage as a description of the “alienation” felt by individuals when they sense that the structures of society are collapsing. It’s that sickening feeling that the world is coming apart.
Dressed even in the best behavior of our present spiritual condition, we are not fit to be at the banquet table of our Maker. We must be converted. Deep change must take place — so deep that it can only grow out of what is called “godly sorrow.”
If we thank the preacher for chastising us now and then, our appreciation is probably for an emotional experience that somehow made us feel better for having been chastised. And having dabbled in religion, we go our way undisturbed and unchanged.
