Prodigal Humility II
Posted on March 22, 2016 by America's Keswick in Freedom Fighters
“God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the LORD.” ~1 Corinthians 1:30-31 (NLT)
Have you looked at the parable of the prodigal son and ever ask yourself what his aim was with receiving his inheritance early? What was the end game with all that loot? I’m gonna stretch this out a bit and say that where ever your heart is with the story there you will not only find the prodigal but the prodigal within you. If you’ve said that he just wanted to rock and roll all night and party every day and needed the money to throw away on it…I would wonder if that was what you wanted to do. Me? I’ll be honest, since it is a young lad we’re talking about, I’ve leaned towards that same answer in the youth of my walk but I now I might just give him the benefit of the doubt and say he wanted to start his own life with it. Maybe….
So…what was your aim when you came to a saving grace knowledge of Jesus Christ? Do you plan an end game with that? Now if you give me that same fire alarm answers that states the end of The Bible can be summed up in two words (WE WIN) then my guess is all you want is to be able to say you’re on the winning team. Which isn’t a bad thing but it can’t be what you rest your walk on. Because if that’s all you intended to do then you’ve cheapen the grace that YHVH has imparted to you and it really is all about you. And I think when you come to humility we should see the end game much clearer than we did when we first accepted Christ. But the unfortunate truth to this is very often we don’t tend to make God our ultimate end because humility isn’t an easy thing.
When you look at the parable of the prodigal do you ever wonder how his presentation was when he approached his father for his inheritance? Was he asking as a humble son or was he belligerent one? Once again I’ll say where ever your heart is with story there you’ll find not only the prodigal but the prodigal within you. And I’ll once again say that in the youth of my walk I could envision this kid being pushy about getting’ his stuff BUT I’ll give benefit of the doubt and say there was a certain sense of humility to it, but in the sense that I said in my last Freedom Fighter. Parleyed humility…I be humble to you if are humble to me. Philia over agape.
Being humble on our terms is a contradiction of itself. And at times we can slip into “moral corruption” and make humility some kinda happy thing to do. Like there is a pleasure seeking end game to it. So our walk looks more hedonistic than Christ-like,
(then the Doobie Brothers sing…” Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just alright oh yeah”!!) and I think that like the prodigal getting the father’s inheritance, we sorta waste our inheritance from Jesus and we feel good about. Never one time bringing it to the forefront of our mind that this is gonna get hard and this gonna take effort. And a funny thing to note is there are some who would dangle the enjoyment of heaven as the reason to come to Christ, never once telling you about the cost. Sad, but true.
Well my time with you is coming to an end today but in closing I hope you not thinking that I’m being a killjoy. It isn’t wrong to enjoy conveying humility to one another and it isn’t wrong to have that as a desire but what I am saying is to make sure it is not ultimately and only self-serving. I’ll be getting into the parable of the prodigal a bit further next time I am with you but until then let me ask you…How much me-time do you need? How much of your time, money and energy go into bringing yourself pleasure? Now think of the widow with the two mites and tell me if you see yourself worth more that. Me? I have to be content on knowing that wasted time, money and energy I don’t get back but I’m also content knowing that losing 100% for the Kingdom is time/money/energy well spent. Amen?
Written by Chris Hughes: Chris, a graduate of The Colony of Mercy (11-2003) is married with two adult children (you may remember them from summer staff) and serves on the Deacon Board at Trinity Alliance Church in Cologne NJ.
The Daily Bible Reading: Psalm 81; Proverbs 21
Click Here to Download our 2016 Daily Bible Reading Plan
Daily Quote: “To many of us it has been a new joy in the Christian life to know that we may yield ourselves as servants, as slaves to God, and to find that His service is our highest liberty—the liberty from sin and self. We need to learn another lesson—that Jesus call us to be servants of one another, and that, as we accept it heartily, this service too will be a blessed one.” ~Andrew Murray
This Week’s Verse to Memorize:
But the transgressors shall be destroyed together;
The future of the wicked shall be cut off. ~Psalm 37:38 (NKJV)
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