From "Tell No Man" by Adela Rogers St. Johns:
My best is not good enough but His is...
There have been days, don't think there haven't, when I've looked at that fellow in the mirror and said to him, Gavin, you smug so-and-so, you look pretty self-righteous to me. Who do you think you are buddy? Then I remember who I am. I am the prodigal son and if you'll reread that bit you'll see that the father wouldn't even listen to the son's self-condemnation and breast-beating, he just welcomed him home...
I remember that of my own self I must admit at once that I can do nothing but that he will always be with me. Then I quit letting any phony inferiority separate me from him...
But I want to make my point first about false modesty. I go back to Acts. You remember when Paul healed the cripple-from-his-mother's-womb at Lystra and the people saw it. So they started yelling that the gods had come down to them in the likeness of men, they brought garlands and oxen to sacrifice to Paul. When Paul heard them he --- it says this in Acts, did you know the whole Book of Acts is just that, the acts Peter and John and Paul and Barnabas and other followers of Jesus did in his name after he was gone? I only just realized this --- anyhow Paul ran among the people crying out to them. We also are men who have the same passions that you do, and preach unto you that you should turn from these vanities unto the living God which made heaven and earth and the sea and all things therein. Well, I faced up to it then, that it is the living God and the Holy Spirit that doeth the works, and not Hank Gavin, and I got back on the track.
No comments:
Post a Comment