Much of it spoke to
me—even grabbed me—but a little part of it made me uncomfortable. It’s this
part in which Sid said:
“Do great things
for God. . . .
What could God
do if every person
who has a
relationship with Him
dared to be
great?
The thought wasn’t
quite developed enough. And what was missing is so important!
Perhaps Sid did
explain it but I didn’t remember. In any case, in last week’s blog, I
overlooked a crucial ingredient. And this week I discovered what it was, and
when I did, it zinged me.
If you and I are to
dare to do great things for God, as Sid challenged us to do, we must do it in
the right way and for the right reasons.
It’s not about how
great you and I are, but how great God is. The greatness comes from Him.
In his devotional, Silent Strength for My Life, Lloyd Ogilvie pointed out that critical missing
ingredient I was searching for.
He asks, “What is true
greatness and how is it achieved? In the Beatitudes, Jesus gave us the
eight-way test of true greatness. He listed the eight character traits He
wanted His disciples to possess.
“Jesus called those
who have these qualities of greatness ‘blessed.’”
To be blessed “. . .
means belonging to God, being his beloved, and knowing you are chosen, called, cherished,
and cared for by Him. Blessedness is experiencing unqualified grace. . . .”
Ogilvie says God
planned for you and me to “experience the blessedness of the qualities of
authentic greatness. . . . We have been designed for greatness according to Christ’s
measurements and by His power! Each Beatitude gives us a dimension of that
greatness. . . aspects of Christ’s character.” (Lloyd John Ogilvie, Silent Strength for my Life)
So doing great things
for God is linked to being blessed by Him—“chosen, called, cherished, and cared
for by Him.” You and I can do great things for God only in that context.
Ogilvie writes many
pages about living according to the Beatitudes—no simple task—emphasizing that
true greatness is based on sincere, authentic human humility.
It’s based on knowing we
humans, on our own, don’t have what it takes to do great things for God—those
things He wants us to do. That was what I failed to point out last week.
If we want to do great things for God, we must, in all
humility, admit our human weaknesses and ask God to help us—and then trust Him
to prepare and equip us and then carry out those divine assignments.
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