“Be joyful because you have hope. Be patient when trouble comes, and pray at all times.” Romans 12:12 NCV
God desires for us to become faithful, trustworthy people. Perseverance is the ability to remain faithful for the duration.
The quest for enlightenment leads us to the wisdom of God. Wisdom is forged through the crucible of perseverance. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is character formed in one moment. There is a process in our becoming all that God created us to be. This is the human side of divine change. Transformation is both the miracle of God and the stewardship of man. Godliness is the result of both divine activity and human action. God promises to do what we cannot do for ourselves, and He commands us to do that which He will not do for us. There is both miracle and responsibility in play. God entrusts us with His resources, and then He holds us accountable for what we do with them.
It isn’t very difficult to see that we are not all the same. Some people seem to have gotten an overload when God was handing out talents; others seem less gifted. But be assured there is divine talent in each of us. It is both waiting to be unleashed and depending on us to be faithful stewards of what we’ve been entrusted with. While we may not be able to perceive it, the great things of God typically come out of our small acts of faithfulness. When He finds that we can be trusted with small things, we then are given responsibility over bigger things. How we serve tends to expose how we would lead.
When we are faithful, we are trustworthy. The person who is unfaithful cannot be trusted. These two characteristics are inseparable. If we do not achieve our God-given potential, although we might consider it a tragedy, we would never think of it as wickedness. But perhaps we should. After all, the servant in the parable of the talents was declared wicked when what he could have done was measured against what he did [Matthew 25:14-30].
-- To be continued --
No comments:
Post a Comment