Have It Your Way

No. 66 - 14th January 2018

My wife and I lead one of the community groups at the King’s Church here in Uckfield. In a large church, it’s easy for a quiet person to get lost in the crowd. So, the idea of the Community Group is to break the Church down into small groups of about a dozen people where we can all have a voice and discuss things that you can’t say in a formal service. This week we were studying a passage in the New Testament where it says, “God chose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him?” We then looked at all the times in the Bible where God chose the underdog to work for him. He kept choosing the younger brother in a culture where the eldest brother always came first. We looked at Jesus himself who chose to be born into a working-class family. At his disciples who were mostly fishermen. Right down to the very nation he chose to work through. It must be among the smallest countries in the world. Just nine square kilometres bigger than Wales.

Why does God do this? Why doesn’t he go for the big and the famous and the spectacular? We decided it was because he doesn’t like Pride. He doesn’t like people with an inflated image of themselves. What he wants is a man or a woman who is willing to put aside their own ambitions and work to his plan because he really does know best. Think of Jesus. A thoroughly competent man. Totally confident in him self. Yet he says, “the Son can do nothing by himself. He only does what he sees his Father doing”. And that was the secret of his success. His wisdom and his strength lay in the fact that he followed the Spirit of God in everything that he did and said.

I told our community group that I’m a very independent person and seldom think of asking someone else for help. Did they think that was Pride? I think it is. But I wanted them to work it through for themselves. The conclusion was “Yes. That’s pride.” It’s the very thing that stops me from relying on God and fitting into his plan for me and for the world. C.S. Lewis once said, “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right, then, have it your way”. Which I would suggest, is why we’ve made such a mess of this world.