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Dear Brother and Sister,
Now we have made that leap of Faith, and we have been busy with Bible Study, getting to know our Lord and His Magnificence... and we start to feel that we need to SHARE it.
We have been blessed abundantly and it seems if all our prayers are answered! Miraculous events happen around us, and we are excited and burning for His Cause. We have SO MUCH to Share!!!
We feel that the Scriptures are just opening to us and that the Holy Spirit is just pouring understanding into us. We feel we have the whole Gospel clinched and receiving revelation upon revelation! We KNOW the answers, and we are confident that we can open the eyes of those less enlightened than us.
We begin to imagine, and we dream of how we will do it. We can "see" ourselves becoming Evangelists, or Pastors, or Teachers but then for no apparent reason we hit a Wall,... and we are clueless as to how to start DOING these things for our Lord, we have no idea how we can begin to walk a path like that...
We are so sure that we are capable, but we don't want to appear arrogant...and so we don't take an authorative stand on what we "know" to be True..., even if we are burning to correct someone else who is "obviously not dividing the Word RIGHT!" In the event that we DO attempt to "teach" them what we believe has been revealed to us, something goes horribly wrong and we are met with open hostility! Do you know why?
Because we were NEVER called to become what we visualized we would become...or do what WE feel we should be doing...
Permit me to share a little story of my childhood with you...
I was a very young little girl (about five years old), and I was invited to a friend's big sister's birthday party. It was a wonderful party, with lots of nice goodies to eat, and little gifts for all the children that came. Then the older children came up with an idea for a game. We would play a roleplay game called "Kings and Queens".... I was sooo excited! I was going to be a Queen!!! I was going to dress up in grown up clothes and put on make up and have a paper crown placed on my head! Then our roles were handed to us...
And since I was only five years old, and there were many children much older than me...they received the roles of Kings and Queens, and me? Well,...I was told that I can be a beautiful rose bush in front of the Palace. I was to stand there and look pretty, a rosebush...
Needless to say...I was shattered!!! How could they! Didn't they know that I was clever? I could be a better Queen than any of those the Birthday Girl picked! This was my first encounter with ego,...my ego...and how much it hurt that others couldn't see in me what I saw in myself...
Of course I sulked, cried and threw a tantrum! (I never seemed to have a problem expressing exactly what I felt...)
And then the Birthday Girl came to me and said very softly and kindly: "If you were really ready to be a Queen, you wouldn't behave like you just did." That shut me up. I had no defense against her words, and I knew she was right. She hugged me, wiped my tears and told me. Then she promised: "With my next birthday when you are a little older, I will make you a Queen too, but right now...I really need a very very pretty rose bush in front of my Palace. Will you be that rose bush for me?"
I just nodded and still sulking I went to take my place as a rosebush... I would be the prettiest rose bush she EVER saw, this was HER party, and I was going to make HER happy...but next year...well, next year if I am the best rosebush I can be, I will be called to be a Queen too...she promised that...and I just have to be patient and obedient...
I convinced myself to behave, hoping that the next time round, she WLL pick me too to be a Queen...
This was my first encounter of having to do something against my ego...and it hurt!
I would have many such experiences in my life before I would finally understand that it's not always about me and what I wanted, but that being selfless was something pure... Something I could never hope to achieve on my own. This was something alien to human nature, and ...Yeshua gave us the ultimate example of what it means to be selfless.
I realized that if He wasn't selfless, I could never have been redeemed through Him, because He would never have agreed to die for me. I was so ashamed...so terribly ashamed, and I still am....But the lesson of the rosebush taught me about empathy and humility even at that tender age...a lesson which I understood only years later, and can only ascribe to His Amazing Grace...
How many of our Brothers and Sisters today look down on their fellow bretheren with superiority, judgemental spirits and "holier than thou" attitudes. How many of us "see ourselves" as the Kings and Queens of our Faith. The ones that others listen to, the ones that give advice to others, never the ones needing help or advice. We are superior, (even if we are the only ones truly believing it)...and if anyone else dares to oppose what we understand of Scripture then THEY MUST be wrong!
And then we don't understand why the Lord does not use us in a way WE know we can and should be used...
(continued)