God seems to come up with incredibly creative ways to answer our prayers. Nearly every day, I ask that He keep me from becoming prideful. Recently—and on a day that I got a huge promotion—He exhibited His originality again.
I work in an office that has a bathroom that is open to the public. There are very few women who work in my building, so we usually have our nice clean ladies’ room to ourselves. This particular morning, however, someone had been in the bathroom before I got there.
Feeling pretty good about my promotion, I finished my cup of coffee and made my way into the common area to use the restroom. To my utter dismay, the early morning visitor had made an unbelievable mess with explosive diarrhea and hadn’t had anything to clean it up with.
Naturally I decided to wait a while to see if anyone else was going to clean it. After a while, I discovered that the guy who usually cleans was off that day. I waited a little longer, ordering business cards with my new title and sifting through email. Then I swallowed the pride that could have welled up, armed myself with rubber gloves, Clorox Clean-Up and an entire roll of paper towels and made my way back into the war zone. It took 20 minutes to restore that small room to a usable state.
I realized that night, as I reflected on my day, perhaps that would be a defining moment in my new position. Instead of allowing myself to become prideful in my accomplishments, I did exactly what Jesus instructed in Luke 22:25-26, “Kings like to throw their weight around and people in authority like to give themselves fancy titles. It’s not going to be that way with you. Let the senior among you become like the junior; let the leader act the part of the servant.” (The Message)
Prayer: Lord, I want to go farther than avoiding the trap of pride. I want to be a servant leader, just as Jesus did his entire life on earth.
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I love a good mystery, don’t you? And to me, there is no greater mystery than God. No matter how much I discover about Him, there is always something more around the next corner or on the next page.
Life with the Lord is always an adventure to me. He shows up in ways and at times I least expect. The other day I drove from Nashville to Austin with my mother-in-law—pretty much west all of the way. It was my turn to drive when the sun was going down, and I was dreading driving into the blinding horizon. But just as the glare threatened to drop below the visor on the windshield, clouds came out of nowhere to speckle the sky. One just happened to spread out right in front of the sun.
The mystery to me was not just where God happened to stir up that cloud to protect my eyes, but how—for the next hour and a half—He put on a display of colors in those clouds that took my breath away. In front of me and as far as I could see all around me, glorious golds, magentas, purples, oranges and pinks danced and shifted in a perfect sunset.
The wonderful mystery to me is that if God can create a sunset that beautiful on a whim, how much more amazing a picture could He make out of my life? Psalm 139 tells us that He had a plan for us before time began. If we say yes to Him, our lives can be a canvas that makes even the most incredible sunsets pale in comparison. I don’t know how that works; it is truly a great mystery to me. I just know that I have an opportunity on this earth to reflect God’s glory and leave a picture of a beautiful life as a legacy. I want that, don’t you?
Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, please give me a great desire to pursue the mystery in You and in the process to reflect your glory in a beautiful way.
Bang Press, publisher of the book BATTLEGROUND, the first adventure in the WorldChangers Series, is proud to announce a new blog. There is great anticipation for weekly devotionals that coincide with the book, Q&A sessions, and possibly even a audiobook / podcast through iTunes. If you haven’t already joined the adventure, now is the time to dive in, it’s a must read that John Bevere states “opens our eyes to the true spiritual realm that surrounds us each and every day.” Copies of the book can be ordered at www.worldchangersbooks.com.