“It’s not smart to stuff yourself with sweets,
nor is glory piled on glory good for you.”
Proverbs 25:27, The Message
“Can I talk to you about Dutch?”
Our children’s pastor pulled me aside and as she spoke my eyes spilled with tears — the joyous kind — as she related and confirmed what I’d already been witnessing in my dear boy. He’s doing so well! Her encouraging words, which I knew to be true, made this mama weep tears of joy. Mind you, he’s still a crazy-imagination-strong-willed-4-year-old and sometimes I still want to throw him out the window, but truly, my boy has changed so much in these past few months it makes my heart soar. The bottom line? Finally seeing the fruit of consistency and the grace of God. And yes I will take a moment’s liberty to share my little victories because I have certainly spent enough time sharing my little woes here in this space.
Just moments before I’d been talking to an elder and his wife about the exact same thing. They were rejoicing with me and, as I knew they were faithful pray-ers for us, I thanked them for their love and support. The husband laughed, “It’s so good for someone like you to have a boy like Dutch because if your kids were perfect you’d write a book about it!”
Ha! He’s right, I’m afraid. I’m sure if they were little compliant angels my head wouldn’t fit through the door and I’d be dishing out advice so fast ya’ll ‘d be sick to your stomachs.
The truth is, he’s right — it’s good for me. As I wrote a year ago, reflecting on Beth Moore’s teaching:
It is actually not good for us to succeed all the time. Nor is it good for our children to always succeed. Some failures are healthy. Some humiliation, excellent, because it humbles us, and humility always leads to more intimacy with God. If we only had success and glory all the time, we wouldn’t have the character God desires. Beth Moore shares a story of how God rebuked/humbled her once and how on the spot she stood there and praised Jesus for His graciousness to her, humbling her. I was so amazed by that. I HATE being humiliated. But what if we embraced it? What if we saw it as an awesome way to be drawn closer to the Father? How cool would that be?!
As Proverbs 25:27 says, just as stuffing ourselves with sweets isn’t good for us, nor is it good for us to have glory piled upon glory.
Of course some of us still like to stuff ourselves with sweets.
Perhaps that’s the problem. We also wouldn’t mind a life of endless glory.
But oh, isn’t it true? Isn’t it so good for us: The scars, the trips, the toilet paper stuck to our shoe?
I know that I have countless more embarrassing and humbling experiences ahead. (For the record, there are few things more humbling than attempting to write a book!) But praise be to God that we can look back and actually thank God for His grace, humbling us and giving us a healthy dose of failure.
He’s never mean; it’s always for our good.
If He takes us down a notch it’s just that much easier to bow low and worship.
{What humbling experiences are you thankful for today? How have they brought you low and enabled you to bow low in worship? From my knees, thanks, dear friend, for reading.}