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The Lord of Glory
by Jerry Ousley They say that confession is good for the soul. I suppose that's true in most cases but I've got to say, I've confessed to a lot of things over the years; most of it might have been good for my soul but in life here on this planet after my confession I feel like I'm standing there holding a pile of smoking ashes in my hands with my hair sticking straight up, my face blackened and my eyebrows singed off because the thing just blew up in my face! Folks there are simply some people you've got to be careful what you tell them because once they know they take an ad out in the paper, put a spot on the TV and radio, and call everyone they know until it seems the whole world is aware of what you've said! Still, the Bible tells us that we are to confess our faults to each other. I've wondered before why that is, but after much study in the word, and life experiences it seems that there are a couple of reasons for this. First, it helps us to stay humble, or if we aren't humble, it teaches us humility. A good way to know if you are humble or not is if you don't talk about it. Another old saying tells us that when we think we're humble then the pride of our humility causes us to lose it. If the Lord sees that we need a good dose of humility He has ways of making us take our medicine. Confessing our faults to each other will go a long way in teaching us to be humble. Second, it is a witness for Christ. When we confess our faults then it lets the world know that we are human after all. We really aren't some holy pious person who is immune from sin but we are real people. We mess up like everyone else. We are tempted and sometimes we don't yield to it and are victorious and sometimes we snap inside, yield to the thing and just like that we've got something to confess to God and others. When people know that Christians aren't perfect just saved, then it can serve to encourage them to also come to Christ. With these things in mind I guess we'll just have to swallow that big lump in our throats and keep on confessing. To be a successful Christian displayed by our commitment to the Lord there's another thing we need to learn to confess. James 2:5 tells us that He is the Lord of Glory. Now those might be easy words to say but there's a whole lot of humble pie behind them. You see, there's something inside each of us that really likes glory. Glory is the praise others give for some great feat accomplished. Often in sports you see the guy who scored the final winning points, touchdown, or won a race by inches, lifted to the shoulders of others. They're celebrating his or her victory by lifting them up for all to see. That's glory and we love it. Something inside of us demands that we get attention from others. We like for people to see us as a hero. As a Christian one hard thing to learn is to disappear in the crowd and let the Lord have all the glory all the praise, all of the honor and all the applause. One of the greatest examples I can think of is found in the life of John the Baptist. He had begun preaching in the wilderness. He baptized others as a sign that they were denouncing their old life of sin. Thousands crowded around him because of his new, fresh message of hope. Then Jesus came on the scene. His message was more powerful and it was demonstrated with healing and miracles. The disciples of John grew jealous and they went to him complaining. Had he not noticed how this Jesus was becoming greater than their leader? When confronted John the Baptist told them, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John knew who Jesus was. He also knew his own place. It would have been a big temptation to fight, perhaps turning to some gimmick to win the people back to him. But he knew that Jesus was the Son of God. He had confessed Him to be the sacrificial Lamb that would remove the sin of the world. And so he allowed himself to fade into the background. That's what we've got to do. In order to confess Jesus as the Lord of Glory we've got to decrease. We need to be smaller and let Christ be greater. We've got to yield the praise to Him because after all, He is the Lord of Glory! Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |