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Aim For Decrease

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One Passion week, of all weeks, I found myself thinking about whether or not I am accomplishing anything as I live here.  As if there are things I need to accomplish for God’s purpose to be fulfilled in me.  Do you ever wonder what Jesus' greatest accomplishment was?  It was not the amazing miracles He performed or even the captivating sermons He preached.  It was his dying to himself.  I would imagine His followers thought it strange that in the times it would have seemed most useful (when he was mocked, flogged, betrayed, etc.) Jesus restrained His power.  Or so it seemed.  His power was most likely being unleashed during these times, not in an effort to secure His own comfort, but in an effort to crucify the flesh He had taken on.  This dying to self eventually culminated in His allowing Himself to die.

 

“It is finished.”   John 19:30

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And it was.  He gave His life away until the only thing left to give was  that last breath.  

 

Our love is so limited. The other-centeredness we once possessed (as those made in the image of God) was stripped away when as a human race we chose sin.  To love as He loved we must first receive His love, then, with our cups overflowing, let it spill out that others might drink too.  The biggest obstacle to the overflow is the self that rises up in us.  Perhaps the greatest thing we can hope to accomplish, is the emptying of ourselves as well.

 

Our greatest accomplishments, if we live right, will not be mountains we have moved or programs we have built. It will be that we have died to ourselves as Jesus has shown us to do.  It will be moments we give up our agenda to help another with a seemingly insignificant task, impacting them in a significant way.  It will be moments we choose to bite our tongues about how we think things should be, and open our hearts to how they actually are. It will be moments we step out of the way long enough to let the fruit of the Spirit be the first to manifest itself in our actions and reactions.   Moments we choose the Comforter over our own comforts.  Moments we pursue God's glory rather than our own.

 

Only Jesus could save the world, and He did it with humility.  In  doing so, He glorified the Father and was glorified by the Father.  Our calling is not to save the world, or even to save ourselves, that will always be the work of Jesus.  Yet we are called to glorify the Father.   We do not understand the mystery of  how our moments here can glorify Him, but we can each conclude as John the Baptist did that for that to happen….

 

“He must increase; but I must decrease.”  John 3:30

 

May our hearts and minds be open to decrease, and the work of the One who will finish the good work He has begun in us.*

( *see Philippians 1:6 )

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