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So You Wanna Be Great? (Part one)
“So, you want to be great?” Jesus said in responding to a dispute that broke out between His disciples.
What Jesus had to say about greatness can be seen through the many stories he told and just how he himself lived among us. The bible is full of illustrations that either directly or indirectly speak about greatness.
SEEKING GOD
Reading the gospels are so incredibly satisfying to me because they record firsthand accounts of God among us from those who were there. So, what Jesus had to say is very important because we will never have such an opportunity again to hear God speak to us in the way He did through Jesus. It is God with us, living among us, like us, but unlike us in that He wasn’t corrupted by sin.
Just think about that for a moment the creator embodied in His son reaching out to His creation at a level that shows such intent, faithfulness and love. That’s partial why the rejection of what Jesus offered through His sacrifice will be made so painful to man in the end, because it so painful to God.
When I read, I watch how Jesus behaved and what Jesus said, I truly want to know what Jesus might be thinking when He said the things he said and did the things he did because this is God himself.
I used to read the bible to find something for self-gain or promotion that I could pride myself in my faith. I couldn’t wait to put on an exhibit of my understanding of the knowledge of God for all to see so I could be great. Thinking back, it makes me regret some of those wasted days, those most embarrassing days, but it was part of a process of realizing the value of something. Over the years I have grown to realize this relationship we can have with God has such endless worth just from the treasures that come from it.
It is more than merely show and tell. Those treasures look wholly different today than what others and myself were trying to pass them off as back then. It’s not all about the treasures, but I am so grateful for all that God has given me. What the treasures do is speak to the greatness of the one giving them. God is great!
These days my journey looks different, my desire has grown to simply wanting to know him because of who He is and you never run out of what you will find. These are the true riches of life. So instead, I seek, I seek Him in prayer, I look for Him in life’s evidence and through the scriptures. I really want to know the person who made me and learn about the creation he made around me to live in, how it works and how He influences it.
I want to grow as much as I can into what God intended for me which is found through that seeking. He promised one day to take me and all those who believe to an even better place with Him. This is what Jesus said and the rest of scriptures speak of the same. I want to be ready for Him when He comes being prepared out of the gratitude I have for Him saving me. Just not for that one day to come in the future but out of gratitude seeking to live through Him every day.
This is also where I find God’s Spirit meets us and changes us and our lives by His power. What an incredible exchange, you come with really nothing but a trustful heart of dependency and a willingness to receive, learn, understand and obey, and in exchange you receive the true treasures of life. God is great! God is rich in mercy!
PURSUIT OF GREATNESS
Over 25 years ago I heard someone speak some things under the inspiration of the Spirit. Among the things that were said was this, “I did not call you to great things, but a great self that I am, says the Lord”. This one statement has stuck with me all these years. I have thought about it often. And as I have thought about it I would like to share insight into it with its reference to greatness.
I come to understand by the scriptures that we were created with a capacity to grow, be fruitful and multiply. This is also seen through nature’s workings. This was first spoken to us upon our creation found in the Book of Genesis. It is in God’s desire for us to do this. We live and walk out our life in this fashion, but how we go about this really determines what greatness is.
This present world seeks greatness by gathering the most; the most knowledge, the most things, the most fame, the most power. All the “most” can come in many categories and when we gather it, we want to be recognized for it and given special attention or privilege because of it. What things in your life have you been gathering through the years or even presently that you want to be recognized for the most?
This route of our own pursuit of gathering can cause us to neglect other things like valuable relationships and responsibilities. This route to greatness the world seeks always compromises with sin to obtain it. This present world’s idea of greatness never says enough either but it has a tremendous appetite for more that keeps driving people on. The need for more promotes pressures and pushes us at times into some absolute worthless things that don’t edify a man’s soul. It is not easy to say no to what the world calls great when you look around and see everyone else pursuing it.
Greatness is being expedited now through social media which is proliferating the ideas to the world’s routes to greatness. Some of the objects of passions advertised on the way to greatness can be downright deplorable and your ruin can be swift if you get caught up in them. It’s why what the world calls “great people” can still be unhappy people even willing to take their own life because they didn’t find the joy and fulfillment they thought would be waiting for them there.
I’ll give a couple of common examples of man-based attempt to achieve greatness. The first example doesn’t require wealth or for you to have great intellect, but to be great in this fashion requires gossiping and cutting others down to elevate oneself above others to feel your superior than your peers. This is the usurper, busybody, gossip.
Another example is on your way to gain you compromise with sin by lying a little, or cheating a little on forms, or just plain outright stealing what is not yours to achieve the “most” you can for yourself. This is the liar, thief, the fraudulent.
Or the flip side of that same example, you work yourself to death so you can be seen as having the most with no time to enjoy it or living with a family you started but don’t know. All these ways will bring destruction to you in some form and you will be filled with a life of pain that will always seem to catch up to you even if you try to run from it. Repent! Do not go another day in the evil way.
To become great by the world’s standards always evolves sin. It is a compromise we need to make to achieve its greatness. It is demanded by the fraudulent ruler of this world to share in the illusions of anything He has. We may say, “well, it’s for God” but God would not ask us to sin to achieve greatness as a testimony for Him.
THE FIRST LESSON ON GREATNESS
We can see this challenge to greatness in the story of the first humans wanting to be great in this way. The scene took place in the garden of Eden. We can find an account of this story written down for us to read in the first book of the Bible called Genesis, Chapter 3. There Eve was persuaded by a cunning serpent, a representative of satan, to do something she wasn’t supposed to do. This serpent begins to wave a curious tempting bait before her and the devil awoke a desire that is innate to her soul that now had her questioning something.
Here’s a question I have for you, please take a moment to answer it if you like; Is the sense of greatness (your worth) rooted in your own feeling of being valued?
Eve was now looking at her own sense of value through a series of questions that this enemy of our humanity skillfully crafted. She was now in the position of feeling less valued for not having knowledge of what this enemy was telling her. Those questions began to translate into her mind as statements pertaining directly to her value. If she was really valuable, she should have known these things, it had to be one of many thoughts. Why do I think she was thinking these things? We are susceptible to be tripped up in this way because of our human condition in our perceived dependence on others for our knowledge and understanding because we are communal (we want to be part of the group). Then along with this we also have that innate desire by God for God to be and feel valued.
The devil had her wondering about things she wasn’t even asked to think about. She was now coming to conclusions that had no bases of reality in truthful knowledge. God had not revealed to them the totality of the reason not to eat from the tree other than the day they do they shall surely die. What does that mean? You shall surely die? Only God would be able to help them understand knowledge in the way He wanted them to… in His time… in reference to Himself the creator of all things. No one can truly know what is in the mind of God except by His Spirit and whomever God desires to reveal His knowledge to. That is why as a believer we must pursue Him making every effort to prepare ourselves that we might know Him.
You have to ask, how many slick tongue devils behind many of the swindlers of the gospel exploited God’s people through the years and taking captive many souls by this type of deception he presented to Eve? Fraudulently baiting them through an emptiness of their lack of knowledge and understanding selling lies as truths causing them to sin against God.
This temptation awoke a desire for Eve to know more. It enticed her feelings of importance and value which was being used to twist what God had told Adam and herself. God had already placed value and importance on Adam and Eve when He made them. He lovingly gave to them parameters in which to live life. Is that hard to understand? In time God would make known to them the reasons for what He does and help them understand the “why?” because of the value He placed on them.
When we read, He made them in His image that doesn’t sound like a limited being God created, it sounds more like a being that can hold great capacity of whatever it is God has for them. We can also see this truth from the history of the human race interaction with God. God is always trying to get them to understand more about Him and His reasons why, but the appeals made by the deceptive illusions of the world are strong and can cause us not to see what God is saying.
DO NOT EAT FROM THIS TREE, seems simple enough but this was going to be the most important lesson God had for them and us to understand. How do I know this to be true? Basic observations concerning life shows that there are parameters that we must live in or pain and destruction comes. It is a theme throughout the whole Bible, spoken of through people’s lives that had been written down for us to see. It has been recorded that we might understand that there are parameters to life and that we need to know the one who made them in order to keep them.
We can see in Eve’s decision that God would not reign supreme by her in the disregard for the parameters he had set for them. Supreme means to be superior to all others. It didn’t of course actually mean God wasn’t supreme, but His position of authority over her would not reign supreme at least not at this moment in this woman’s life.
She was allowing Her thoughts to be diminished concerning the supremacy of God and what He said. Her thoughts were now meditating on something she perceived greater than God at that moment…herself and what she wanted. Through her act of disobedience, we can see her shortsightedness in her thinking, but I guess it is always easier to see faults in others. It is a lot less easy to understand why and how we ourselves and others are captured by them.
The scriptures do not say how much time had passed between the serpent’s introduction of these thoughts to her and the amount of time she spent meditating on them and justifying them within her heart. At some point, Eve decided what she wanted to do and brought Adam with her. She was about to show Adam how great she can be by what she knows.
I can’t help but think of the new feelings of shame, pain and regret that this unknown act of rebellion was soon going to bring to her and her husband’s life. I know too well this feeling of regret from the pain of my own share of wrong doing.
Eve- tempted by wrong thoughts, desire awaken and enticed, compromises by acting on sin, taking the fruit from the tree they were forbidden and eating it. Eve did show Adam she was the “most” by showing Him they could eat from this tree. Her pursuit of greatness to prove herself valuable/important was short lived and set a series of consequences into motion. It is partially true she would now know good and evil like God because God is about to make it known to them.
(you can read about the consequences that befell them and all of us because of their sin in the book of Genesis Chapter 3, verses 12-24, in the Bible)
Why did consequences involve the removal from the positions they were given to lessor ones that were accompanied with various trials that will make living much more difficult? We say, “they sinned” but is it just me or was the consequences seemingly harsh for what they had done? Some may say they deserved it because they were disobedient to God. But then I think of the disobedience we do, even worse things with much more knowledge of the consequence of sin then these two. I can never be thankful enough for the mercy God has on us. Why did they receive such harsh consequences?
Let’s look at this whole situation again in an overview. The devil was playing his part through the serpent. Satan was already black listed for His rebellion against God in heaven. Now we see him here trying to call into question God’s ability to reason, judge and set value. He thought he could accomplish this through two things by what he did to Eve.
The first, by showing that what God created is flawed. In this way, Adam then Eve who was created by God could rebel even though they were made in His image and set in a world that seemingly would give to you all of life’s advantages.
The similarity to the second reason is tied to the first. It’s because the devil also rebelled when He was an angel to God. The scriptures lead us to believe that he tried usurping God’s authority wanting to position himself above God as supreme. When he did not succeed in his rebellion, he himself and the other angels he had convince to rebel with him were thrown out of heaven. They are now awaiting, the great and terrible for them, day of the Lord and their full punishment for their rebellion. These angels were removed from their position of value and importance because they wanted to be GREATER! The devil is now bent on showing to all that God is wrong, God is not supreme in everything. In simple words, God is not as great as everyone thinks and the devil is bent on pursuing this thought to the end.
Is it his hatred towards God because of God’s judgement pronounced on him? or is it now his only hope of redemption by proving God is not just in His judgments that is motivating him to corrupt God’s creation? Maybe it’s both.
For us in what we read in the Bible from the past, what we see is happening today and what is foretold will come in the future presents to us an open display that God has allowed all that He created to see He is just. It has been foretold and written down for us to know in the Bible. This display says, He is not only all powerful but His judgments are right and that we can place our trust and our dependence on Him who created us and everything that was created by Him.
Numbers 23:19 says,
God is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind. Does He speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?
“So, you want to be great?” Jesus said in responding to a dispute that broke out between His disciples.
What Jesus had to say about greatness can be seen through the many stories he told and just how he himself lived among us. The bible is full of illustrations that either directly or indirectly speak about greatness.
SEEKING GOD
Reading the gospels are so incredibly satisfying to me because they record firsthand accounts of God among us from those who were there. So, what Jesus had to say is very important because we will never have such an opportunity again to hear God speak to us in the way He did through Jesus. It is God with us, living among us, like us, but unlike us in that He wasn’t corrupted by sin.
Just think about that for a moment the creator embodied in His son reaching out to His creation at a level that shows such intent, faithfulness and love. That’s partial why the rejection of what Jesus offered through His sacrifice will be made so painful to man in the end, because it so painful to God.
When I read, I watch how Jesus behaved and what Jesus said, I truly want to know what Jesus might be thinking when He said the things he said and did the things he did because this is God himself.
I used to read the bible to find something for self-gain or promotion that I could pride myself in my faith. I couldn’t wait to put on an exhibit of my understanding of the knowledge of God for all to see so I could be great. Thinking back, it makes me regret some of those wasted days, those most embarrassing days, but it was part of a process of realizing the value of something. Over the years I have grown to realize this relationship we can have with God has such endless worth just from the treasures that come from it.
It is more than merely show and tell. Those treasures look wholly different today than what others and myself were trying to pass them off as back then. It’s not all about the treasures, but I am so grateful for all that God has given me. What the treasures do is speak to the greatness of the one giving them. God is great!
These days my journey looks different, my desire has grown to simply wanting to know him because of who He is and you never run out of what you will find. These are the true riches of life. So instead, I seek, I seek Him in prayer, I look for Him in life’s evidence and through the scriptures. I really want to know the person who made me and learn about the creation he made around me to live in, how it works and how He influences it.
I want to grow as much as I can into what God intended for me which is found through that seeking. He promised one day to take me and all those who believe to an even better place with Him. This is what Jesus said and the rest of scriptures speak of the same. I want to be ready for Him when He comes being prepared out of the gratitude I have for Him saving me. Just not for that one day to come in the future but out of gratitude seeking to live through Him every day.
This is also where I find God’s Spirit meets us and changes us and our lives by His power. What an incredible exchange, you come with really nothing but a trustful heart of dependency and a willingness to receive, learn, understand and obey, and in exchange you receive the true treasures of life. God is great! God is rich in mercy!
PURSUIT OF GREATNESS
Over 25 years ago I heard someone speak some things under the inspiration of the Spirit. Among the things that were said was this, “I did not call you to great things, but a great self that I am, says the Lord”. This one statement has stuck with me all these years. I have thought about it often. And as I have thought about it I would like to share insight into it with its reference to greatness.
I come to understand by the scriptures that we were created with a capacity to grow, be fruitful and multiply. This is also seen through nature’s workings. This was first spoken to us upon our creation found in the Book of Genesis. It is in God’s desire for us to do this. We live and walk out our life in this fashion, but how we go about this really determines what greatness is.
This present world seeks greatness by gathering the most; the most knowledge, the most things, the most fame, the most power. All the “most” can come in many categories and when we gather it, we want to be recognized for it and given special attention or privilege because of it. What things in your life have you been gathering through the years or even presently that you want to be recognized for the most?
This route of our own pursuit of gathering can cause us to neglect other things like valuable relationships and responsibilities. This route to greatness the world seeks always compromises with sin to obtain it. This present world’s idea of greatness never says enough either but it has a tremendous appetite for more that keeps driving people on. The need for more promotes pressures and pushes us at times into some absolute worthless things that don’t edify a man’s soul. It is not easy to say no to what the world calls great when you look around and see everyone else pursuing it.
Greatness is being expedited now through social media which is proliferating the ideas to the world’s routes to greatness. Some of the objects of passions advertised on the way to greatness can be downright deplorable and your ruin can be swift if you get caught up in them. It’s why what the world calls “great people” can still be unhappy people even willing to take their own life because they didn’t find the joy and fulfillment they thought would be waiting for them there.
I’ll give a couple of common examples of man-based attempt to achieve greatness. The first example doesn’t require wealth or for you to have great intellect, but to be great in this fashion requires gossiping and cutting others down to elevate oneself above others to feel your superior than your peers. This is the usurper, busybody, gossip.
Another example is on your way to gain you compromise with sin by lying a little, or cheating a little on forms, or just plain outright stealing what is not yours to achieve the “most” you can for yourself. This is the liar, thief, the fraudulent.
Or the flip side of that same example, you work yourself to death so you can be seen as having the most with no time to enjoy it or living with a family you started but don’t know. All these ways will bring destruction to you in some form and you will be filled with a life of pain that will always seem to catch up to you even if you try to run from it. Repent! Do not go another day in the evil way.
To become great by the world’s standards always evolves sin. It is a compromise we need to make to achieve its greatness. It is demanded by the fraudulent ruler of this world to share in the illusions of anything He has. We may say, “well, it’s for God” but God would not ask us to sin to achieve greatness as a testimony for Him.
THE FIRST LESSON ON GREATNESS
We can see this challenge to greatness in the story of the first humans wanting to be great in this way. The scene took place in the garden of Eden. We can find an account of this story written down for us to read in the first book of the Bible called Genesis, Chapter 3. There Eve was persuaded by a cunning serpent, a representative of satan, to do something she wasn’t supposed to do. This serpent begins to wave a curious tempting bait before her and the devil awoke a desire that is innate to her soul that now had her questioning something.
Here’s a question I have for you, please take a moment to answer it if you like; Is the sense of greatness (your worth) rooted in your own feeling of being valued?
Eve was now looking at her own sense of value through a series of questions that this enemy of our humanity skillfully crafted. She was now in the position of feeling less valued for not having knowledge of what this enemy was telling her. Those questions began to translate into her mind as statements pertaining directly to her value. If she was really valuable, she should have known these things, it had to be one of many thoughts. Why do I think she was thinking these things? We are susceptible to be tripped up in this way because of our human condition in our perceived dependence on others for our knowledge and understanding because we are communal (we want to be part of the group). Then along with this we also have that innate desire by God for God to be and feel valued.
The devil had her wondering about things she wasn’t even asked to think about. She was now coming to conclusions that had no bases of reality in truthful knowledge. God had not revealed to them the totality of the reason not to eat from the tree other than the day they do they shall surely die. What does that mean? You shall surely die? Only God would be able to help them understand knowledge in the way He wanted them to… in His time… in reference to Himself the creator of all things. No one can truly know what is in the mind of God except by His Spirit and whomever God desires to reveal His knowledge to. That is why as a believer we must pursue Him making every effort to prepare ourselves that we might know Him.
You have to ask, how many slick tongue devils behind many of the swindlers of the gospel exploited God’s people through the years and taking captive many souls by this type of deception he presented to Eve? Fraudulently baiting them through an emptiness of their lack of knowledge and understanding selling lies as truths causing them to sin against God.
This temptation awoke a desire for Eve to know more. It enticed her feelings of importance and value which was being used to twist what God had told Adam and herself. God had already placed value and importance on Adam and Eve when He made them. He lovingly gave to them parameters in which to live life. Is that hard to understand? In time God would make known to them the reasons for what He does and help them understand the “why?” because of the value He placed on them.
When we read, He made them in His image that doesn’t sound like a limited being God created, it sounds more like a being that can hold great capacity of whatever it is God has for them. We can also see this truth from the history of the human race interaction with God. God is always trying to get them to understand more about Him and His reasons why, but the appeals made by the deceptive illusions of the world are strong and can cause us not to see what God is saying.
DO NOT EAT FROM THIS TREE, seems simple enough but this was going to be the most important lesson God had for them and us to understand. How do I know this to be true? Basic observations concerning life shows that there are parameters that we must live in or pain and destruction comes. It is a theme throughout the whole Bible, spoken of through people’s lives that had been written down for us to see. It has been recorded that we might understand that there are parameters to life and that we need to know the one who made them in order to keep them.
We can see in Eve’s decision that God would not reign supreme by her in the disregard for the parameters he had set for them. Supreme means to be superior to all others. It didn’t of course actually mean God wasn’t supreme, but His position of authority over her would not reign supreme at least not at this moment in this woman’s life.
She was allowing Her thoughts to be diminished concerning the supremacy of God and what He said. Her thoughts were now meditating on something she perceived greater than God at that moment…herself and what she wanted. Through her act of disobedience, we can see her shortsightedness in her thinking, but I guess it is always easier to see faults in others. It is a lot less easy to understand why and how we ourselves and others are captured by them.
The scriptures do not say how much time had passed between the serpent’s introduction of these thoughts to her and the amount of time she spent meditating on them and justifying them within her heart. At some point, Eve decided what she wanted to do and brought Adam with her. She was about to show Adam how great she can be by what she knows.
I can’t help but think of the new feelings of shame, pain and regret that this unknown act of rebellion was soon going to bring to her and her husband’s life. I know too well this feeling of regret from the pain of my own share of wrong doing.
Eve- tempted by wrong thoughts, desire awaken and enticed, compromises by acting on sin, taking the fruit from the tree they were forbidden and eating it. Eve did show Adam she was the “most” by showing Him they could eat from this tree. Her pursuit of greatness to prove herself valuable/important was short lived and set a series of consequences into motion. It is partially true she would now know good and evil like God because God is about to make it known to them.
(you can read about the consequences that befell them and all of us because of their sin in the book of Genesis Chapter 3, verses 12-24, in the Bible)
Why did consequences involve the removal from the positions they were given to lessor ones that were accompanied with various trials that will make living much more difficult? We say, “they sinned” but is it just me or was the consequences seemingly harsh for what they had done? Some may say they deserved it because they were disobedient to God. But then I think of the disobedience we do, even worse things with much more knowledge of the consequence of sin then these two. I can never be thankful enough for the mercy God has on us. Why did they receive such harsh consequences?
Let’s look at this whole situation again in an overview. The devil was playing his part through the serpent. Satan was already black listed for His rebellion against God in heaven. Now we see him here trying to call into question God’s ability to reason, judge and set value. He thought he could accomplish this through two things by what he did to Eve.
The first, by showing that what God created is flawed. In this way, Adam then Eve who was created by God could rebel even though they were made in His image and set in a world that seemingly would give to you all of life’s advantages.
The similarity to the second reason is tied to the first. It’s because the devil also rebelled when He was an angel to God. The scriptures lead us to believe that he tried usurping God’s authority wanting to position himself above God as supreme. When he did not succeed in his rebellion, he himself and the other angels he had convince to rebel with him were thrown out of heaven. They are now awaiting, the great and terrible for them, day of the Lord and their full punishment for their rebellion. These angels were removed from their position of value and importance because they wanted to be GREATER! The devil is now bent on showing to all that God is wrong, God is not supreme in everything. In simple words, God is not as great as everyone thinks and the devil is bent on pursuing this thought to the end.
Is it his hatred towards God because of God’s judgement pronounced on him? or is it now his only hope of redemption by proving God is not just in His judgments that is motivating him to corrupt God’s creation? Maybe it’s both.
For us in what we read in the Bible from the past, what we see is happening today and what is foretold will come in the future presents to us an open display that God has allowed all that He created to see He is just. It has been foretold and written down for us to know in the Bible. This display says, He is not only all powerful but His judgments are right and that we can place our trust and our dependence on Him who created us and everything that was created by Him.
Numbers 23:19 says,
God is not a man who lies, or a son of man who changes His mind. Does He speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?
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