Not About Me…
I am a decent and kind person and for many years what people saw was ME.
"Oh Lisa, you are so amazing. You are so good with kids. You are so positive. You are so giving. You are so good. " And while deep down I knew the real truth of who I was apart from Christ, I seldom gave credit where credit was due. For many years, people saw me, not Jesus within me. A dear friend passed this quote by Arthur Custance and it had a profound impact in the way I looked at myself and God's purposes for my life. He says,
"It often happens that a man (woman) who has a certain natural ability and is filled with high ideals and is known for his (her) good works, will, when he (she) is converted, become for a season a far less admirable and effective individual. The good old man is slowly undermined because it is good only in an accidental way. This form of natural goodness has to be replaced by a supernatural goodness. It is the work of special Grace to convert natural goodness, which is counterfeit in the sight of God, into supernatural goodness that is genuine because the motivation has been freed from the bondage of sin, and brought into conformity to the will of God (Romans 6:18). In a real sense, all goodness in the natural man is simple self-indulgence."
Wow! I thougth about that quote for days. This began a long process of understanding what God was up to in my life and faith during that time as I looked at some of the very difficult circumstances I found myself in. Our move out of the Bay Area up to Sacramento was God's time to begin the stripping process of what I had relied so much on for all those years. Natural goodness! Through a series of trials and personal events; Without a home church, rejection from people, no ministry to serve in, my husband lost his job, no family to have help us with our 3 kids under 3 at that time, and post-partum depression. I saw everything that had defined me for so many years taken away. And it was in my vulnerability and self awareness that God graciously began to teach me that my sole purpose for serving people was to draw people to God not to Lisa.
I encourage you to think about this quote and reflect on the following questions:
When others look into your life, who do you want them to see?
What gets in the way of others seeing God's supernatural work in you life?
Can you begin to look at those things that have defined you throughout your life possibly competing with the ways Jesus want to define who you are?
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-1