Commendation Lists

What is your commendation list? That little pile of accomplishments on which you are basing your value and worth in life? What does it look like? Are you proud of it? Are you still working for more of it... hoping and longing to cap it all off with a spectacular grand finale?

Here is Paul's commendation list:
2 Corinthians 6:3–10 (ESV) We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, 4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; 7 by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8 through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

Wow. That's quite a list. And God the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to put it in the Bible. Why? Because to be a follower of Jesus bears a certain attitude about life the world considers foreign. It is not a life filled with glamour and self adulation. It is not a life filled with pleasure and gain. It is not a life that centers on self importance in the eyes of others and who drives the best car or lives in the biggest house. Those things are all from the world (1 John 2:15). 

What if you spend your life building the wrong list? It's not that God would love you to be poor. Not that. But God would have you constantly reorienting yourself as His servant and that comes with some scars. That comes with some pain and struggle. 

I look at this list and I realize how few people actually would ever boast of such things. But these are the signs that Earth is not what you're hoping for. These are the experiences of the pilgrim making his way home. This is the list of a mission - oriented ambassador who knows there's a job to do and so he does it no matter what gets thrown at him.

Christianity is not here to calm your life down. The experiences of hostility you face come standard when you start to buck the devil's agenda for people's lives. Expect it, and embrace it. 

Scars come standard.

PRAYER:

Father, help me to press on in faith when the enemy comes to try and stop me. I stand in the power of Your might because I know I'm not strong enough on my own. You have put me on a mission. And I want to finish Your work. By Grace, I go, In Jesus' Name. Amen.