Ouch! This article rebuked me. It is taken from The Shadow of the Broad Brim and tells of a Spurgeon sermon in which he said,
"We have plenty of people nowadays who could not kill a mouse without publishing it in the Gospel Gazette. Samson killed a lion and said nothing about it: the Holy Spirit finds modesty so rare that He takes care to record it. Say much of what the Lord has doen for you, but say little of what you have done for the Lord. Do not utter a self-glorifying sentence!"
The brutal reality is that I am prone to boast in myself and not in the Lord. I am not like the child of which Piper wrote. John Piper wrote of a small child near drowning by the sea shore who, upon being rescued by his father, does not boast but rather hugs. I am unlike that child. I tend to boast. I don't know why. I really have nothing to boast of.
It is reminiscent to me of a poem I once penned whose final stanza goes this way,
Yet many times we lose a flower
And left with only her scent discover
That her death may have been better
For the fragrance it was now able to deliver.
May it be this way. May God crush me down and strip me of all my personal, external beauty, but that in doing so He may be glorified by the precious aroma of His good news.
No comments:
Post a Comment