The other day a good friend showed me a conference brochure. It promoted a list of sought-after speakers, all wildly successful in their recent business or ministry endeavors. One of the young men pictured is a friend of mine, and I have been privileged to help him in small ways. I felt a little surge of pride. There is good pride — the “Isn’t it cool to watch how God is working” kind, and bad pride –the “Isn’t it cool that I’m important” kind, and at that first moment I’m not quite sure which I felt. In the next moment, though, my mind began to list all the ministry leaders I know who would take my call. By then I was definitely in the “bad pride” arena. I remembered having dropped many of their names during a long car ride just a week earlier. And then, as a firm but gentle rebuke, I could almost hear these words, whispered to my heart by our loving Lord.
“Yes, they’d take your call. The really big deal, though, is that I will take your call–any time of day or night. That is what makes you important. And I will take the call of every person in this room. That’s what makes them important, too. You are all of equal value.”
Yes, it’s who we know. But let’s all get this point straight, the only one we need to know, the One who gives us inestimable value, is the Lord God Almighty. And we can all know him. In this blog I invite you to join me in getting to know him better, in learning to follow him more closely, and in embracing life with him every moment of every day.
2 Corinthians 3:4 NIV ’80 “Not that we are competent to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.”
Smoother Sailing 