Being gracious!

"Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends." Proverbs 17:9

This verse took me by surprise. So much wisdom hidden in God's word. Truly, "The unfolding of Your word gives light." As sinners, we are bound to hurt/get hurt and offend/get offended by our fellow believers on various occasions. It takes much grace and humility not to hold it against the one who has sinned against us.

When we deliberately 'choose' to conceal another person's sinful act committed against us, we seek love in the truest sense. We need to be wise in order to estimate whether the offense against us need to be considered.

I think, this offers a great opportunity for the believer(sinned against) to exercise forgiveness and emulate Christ Jesus our Lord! Whereas the sinning believer learns how to receive mercy and helps him/her to reconsider his/her sinful ways.

There is power, tremendous power in forgiveness. It gives a chance for the person to change. Grace is magnetic in its influence! But, if we repeat that particular matter and make it a point of discussion, it brings about separation. Maybe, one might get the desired justice, but a friend is lost in the process.

What a heavy price to pay!!
"A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city." Proverbs 18:19a

You are kept low for your own safety

“God blesses us all up to the full measure and extremity of what it is safe for him to do. If you do not get a blessing, it is because it is not safe for you to have one. If our heavenly Father were to let your unhumbled spirit win a victory in his holy war, you would pilfer the crown for yourself, and meeting with a fresh enemy you would fall a victim; so that you are kept low for your own safety.

When a man is sincerely humble, and never ventures to touch so much as a grain of the praise, there is scarcely any limit to what God will do for him. Humility makes us ready to be blessed by the God of all grace, and fits us to deal efficiently with our fellow men. True humility is a flower which will adorn any garden.”

- Charles Spurgeon, Morning & Evening, April 5

True Humility

This is a devotion by Charles Spurgeon on the humility of Christ. So much to understand what true humility is...an example set forth by Our Lord!!

"He humbled himself." -- Philippians 2:8

Jesus is the great teacher of lowliness of heart. We need daily to learn of him. See the Master taking a towel and washing his disciples' feet! Follower of Christ, wilt thou not humble thyself? See him as the Servant of servants, and surely thou canst not be proud! Is not this sentence the compendium of his biography, "He humbled himself"? Was he not on earth always stripping off first one robe of honor and the another, till, naked, he was fastened to the cross, and there did he not empty out his inmost self, pouring out his life-blood, giving up for all of us, till they laid him penniless in a borrowed grave?

How low was our dear Redeemer brought! How then can we be proud? Stand at the foot of the cross, and count the purple drops by which you have been cleansed; see the thorn-crown; mark his scourged shoulders, still gushing with encrimsoned rills; see hands and feet given up to the rough iron, and his whole self to mockery and scorn; see the bitterness, and the pangs, and the throes of inward grief, showing themselves in his outward frame; hear the thrilling shriek, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

And if you do not lie prostrate on the ground before that cross, you have never seen it: if you are not humbled in the presence of Jesus, you do not know him. You were so lost that nothing could save you but the sacrifice of God's only begotten.Think of that, and as Jesus stooped for you, bow yourself in lowliness sat his feet. A sense of Christ's amazing love to us has a greater tendency to humble us than even a consciousness of our own guilt.

May the Lord bring us in contemplation to Calvary, then our position will no longer be that of the pompous man of pride, but we shall take the humble place of one who loves much because much has been forgiven him. Pride cannot live beneath the cross. Let us sit there and learn ourlesson, and then rise and carry it into practice.

I don't deserve to be treated that way...

I think I have made the above statement a lot lately and I am not proud of it. I should be thankful for what the Lord has given me instead of being prideful and arrogant. The way things have been going at my workplace many a times I tend to think, this is not what I deserve, I am qualified to do more. God has been very patient and gracious with me. I was reading 12 Ordinary men by John MacArthur, and one of the incident that was mentioned in the book was about Jesus washing the disciples feet (John 13:1-20). Even as I was going through the context I realized that what Jesus did (by washing the disciples feet) was a very menial job. Yet He did it, without complaining & grumbling. Let us not forget who we are talking of; He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lord’s, creator of the heavens and the earth.

It is such a privilege to worship a God who is perfect and Holy and the best example we can follow. Reading that passage made me think, that God being so great went down to the level of a servant and washed the disciples feet, and thus set an example of humility and genuine love. So every time you feel that you are being told to do something (which in your own eyes, seems low) look unto Christ “who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Philippians 2:6-8