G Edward Griffin: A Look at the Federal Reserve
Monday, June 4, 2012
The Miracle and Answered Prayer!
By Dennis Edwards:
Chapter 3: The Miracle and Prayer Answered!
A few days past and I still did not know what I would do about the draft. I knew my time was short and the FBI would soon find me in Marietta, as I was making no efforts to hide. At the end, I had decided to resist the draft and go to prison if need be. This is a stance which every young American youth could take; white, black, educated, uneducated, rich or poor. Therefore, I thought it was the most honest position, as it was open to every man and not just to the middle or upper class white boys who could find a deferment or escape to Canada or Sweden.
Two weeks after my mother´s call, I went for two days to Columbus, Ohio to attend a teacher´s convention. It was on the return to Marietta that I picked up the hitch hiking young couple on their way to Ellenville, New York. He was an American and she was from Mexican decent. They asked me what I believed. We soon got into a conversation with me sharing my philosophy of life developed from my four years at college and my search for the truth. Slowly, they began to talk to me about Jesus. At first, I remember thinking “Oh, no, I´ve got two Jehovah Witnesses.” But they were different. After a time talking, we stopped at a restaurant where I bowed my head and asked Jesus, if he really was the son of God, to come into my heart and life and show me.
Later as he drove further, Chris talked with me about the importance of the Holy Spirit. So, while driving my brother´s Volkswagen bug down the motor way, I prayed to receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Only a few more miles up the road was where I needed to drop them off to start on my decent back to Marietta, about 100 miles south of Columbus, if memory holds. Chris talked with me further. He encouraged me that it was no coincidence that I had met them. Now, he questioned, was God calling me to discipleship? I was already used to doing things on the spur of the moment, so I decided to take them to Ellenville and see this community for myself. Could there really be young Christian disciples living for God?
What impressed me the most about Chris and his partner was that they were just as much against the war as I was. This was the first time I had met “Christians” against the war. I had spoken with Christian youth on the college campus. Those dedicated to Christ were usually always very pro American and therefore willing to support the war effort in some way. I even had a very close friend who had been a conscientious objector and had served as an army medic in Vietnam. But as much as he had tried, he could not convince me that CO was the most righteous or moral stand.
During my search for conscientious objector, I had also gone and spoken to both Catholic Priests and Protestant Ministers. They had always told me it was my Christian duty to obey the government and done the army uniform and perform my duty for God and country. I had already come to the decision from reading Tolstoy and others, including Mark Twain´s famous War Prayer[1] and the New Testament, that this pro war stance was a compromise and not in accordance with the words of Jesus. I had finally met some Christians who believed as I did about the war and now was going to see what made them tick.
Next Chapter 4: Ellenville Christian Community College
[1] http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.htmlThe War Prayer- by Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.
The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, which Twain opposed. See Jim Zwick's page "Mark Twain on the Philippines" for more of Twain's writings on the subject.
Transcribed by Steven Orso (snorso@facstaff.wisc.edu)
Words We Do Not Want To Hear!
Now, in the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, when the President is preparing for a mighty war, when over 80 percent of Americans support him and want blood, whether in the name of retribution or justice, now is the time to repeat the words we do not want to hear.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . .
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
That you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
~ Matthew 5: 38-39; 43-45.
This is all you need to know if you want to do what is right in this situation. We should not wage war on terrorists or the Taliban, nor try to bring them to justice. We should, however, pray for them and do good to them.
In the 1800’s a small number of men, including the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, spent a large part of their lives working out the implications of this teaching and trying to spread the word to their fellow man. Much of this good work might have been lost or buried in oblivion but for the efforts of one of them, Leo Tolstoy, who gathered it together in making his own case, still available in the much ignored, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894).
According to Tolstoy, the meaning of Christ’s command to "resist not evil" is plain enough: it is wrong to use force or violence to oppose evil. Since Christ’s command is unconditional, there are no exceptions. Not for a "just" war, not for retribution, not for justice, not even for self-defense at the time of the assault. Further, the clear implication is also that it is wrong to participate in any enterprise that employs force or violence against our fellow man (even if only to oppose evil). Christ’s command thus renders government illegitimate. The Christian who follows Christ’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, then, will not be a soldier, or participate in any of the institutions of government, the courts or elections, and will not have any recourse to the authorities, the police or the law.
Christ’s teaching forever severs the question of what is good or evil, just or unjust, from the question of the use of force, and pronounces the latter wrong and evil under all circumstances. Regardless of what is right, good or just, it is wrong, always, to use force or violence to establish, uphold, vindicate or maintain the right, the good or the just, and it is wrong to use force to punish or "reform" the wicked.
Instead, the Christian "resists not." As Tolstoy notes, "To submit means to prefer suffering to using force. And to prefer suffering to using force means to be good, or at least less wicked than those who do unto others what they would not like themselves."1
Tolstoy musters many arguments to demonstrate that Christ’s teaching is the only true and lasting foundation of peace and brotherhood among men, and to explain why violence cannot eliminate evil, but only beget more violence. One of his more powerful arguments concerns the impossibility of settling disputes by recourse to violence when there is no universally accepted, unquestioned criterion for distinguishing good from evil. In the absence of such criterion, the men who are the objects of our violence do not perceive or accept their acts as evil and do not experience the violence directed at them as just punishment for their deeds, but simply as unjust violence and a fresh insult that, in turn, prompts them to respond in kind. Thus, we can expect that a counterattack upon the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and those who harbor them will kindle greater hatred in the Muslim world against us.
Tolstoy was no pie-eyed idealist blind to the nature of man. Although he quotes other advocates of non-resistance who argue on prudential grounds that refraining from the use of violence is, in the long run, a safer course than using violence to suppress evil, since it gives least occasion for the creation of ill-will, he did not maintain that those who adhered to Christ’s command would soon cease being the object of oppression or violence, or would be but rarely the objects of such acts.
Indeed, Tolstoy spends much effort addressing one of the strongest criticisms of non-resistance, namely, that without government, the wicked will oppress the good. It requires a strong disposition to follow Tolstoy here for, to his everlasting credit, he does not endeavor to support Christ’s teaching by prudential appeals to man’s rational self-interest through promises that adhering to Christ’s teaching will soon make life easy or better for men, nor pretend that eliminating government will end man’s inhumanity to man.
The champions of government assert that without it the wicked will oppress and outrage the good, and that the power of the government enables the good to resist the wicked.
But in this assertion the champions of the existing order of things take for granted the proposition they want to prove. When they say that except for the government the bad would oppress the good, they take it for granted that the good are those who are the present time are in possession of power, and the bad are those who are in subjection to it. But this is just what wants proving.
The good cannot seize power, nor retain it; to do this men must love power. And love of power is inconsistent with goodness; but quite consistent with the very opposite qualities – pride, cunning, cruelty.
Without the aggrandizement of self and the abasement of others, without hypocrisies and deceptions, without prisons, fortresses, executions, and murders, no power can come into existence or be maintained. . . . .
. . . ruling means using force, and using force means doing to him to whom force is used, what he does not like and what he who uses the force would certainly not like done to himself. Consequently ruling means doing to others what we would not they should do unto us, that is, doing wrong.2
Since the good, by definition, cannot and will not wield power, "The wicked will always dominate the good, and will always oppress them."3 Moreover, in holding up the specter of imagined future dangers of violence and oppression by others, those who claim we need the government’s protection ignore or discount the magnitude of the actual existing violence and oppression already practiced by their own government against its own people and others. Tolstoy concludes that government’s ceasing to exist and to provide its "protection" may result in a change in the men who subject the good to oppression and violence, but will not, ultimately, change the overall lot of the good. Thus, good men who see the true nature of their government and its actions cannot be terrorized by specters of the harm that will befall them in government’s absence, because they realize that they already are, ever have been and ever will be oppressed and exploited by the wicked. A change in this state of affairs will come about only after most men have learned, through generations of bitter and futile experience, the inability of violence to put an end to evil, and to accept the truth of Christ’s counsel.
Tolstoy also takes strong issue, based on the evidence provided by history, with the belief that it is possible to subdue a nation, or improve it, with violence: "And indeed how could nations be subjugated by violence who are led to by their whole education, their traditions, and even their religion to see the loftiest virtue in warring with their oppressors and fighting for freedom? . . . To exterminate such nations . . . by violence is possible, and indeed is done, but to subdue them is impossible."4
Much of Tolstoy’s energy in Kingdom of God is directed at answering those who claim that Christ’s teaching cannot mean what it plainly says, or that it is too idealistic for men, because it does not agree with how men want to live, or would require too great a change in "the existing order of things." Curiously, although Tolstoy was apparently unaware of his work, the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, often dealt with this characteristic response to God’s unconditional commands.
True worship of God consists quite simply in doing God’s will.
But this sort of worship was never to man’s taste. That which in all generations men have been busied about, that in which theological learning originated, becomes many, many disciplines, widens out to interminable prolixity, that upon which and for which thousands of priests and professors live . . . is the contrivance of another sort of divine worship, which consists in . . . having one’s own will, but doing it in such a way that the name of God, the invocation of God, is brought into conjunction with it, whereby man thinks he is assured against being ungodly – whereas, alas, precisely this is the most aggravated sort of ungodliness.
An example. A man is inclined to want to support himself by killing people. Now he sees from God’s Word that this is not permissible, that God’s will is, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ‘All right,’ he thinks, ‘ but that sort of worship doesn’t suit me, neither would I be an ungodly man.’ What does he do then? He gets hold of a priest who in God’s name blesses the dagger. Yes, that’s something different.5
Kierkegaard characterized man’s unbelieving or unwilling response to an unconditional demand of the Divine as man’s "sensibleness." It is a reaction that many who staunchly adhere to the Bill of Rights will readily recognize. For example, scarcely is the command, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" uttered, before learned law professors and judges hasten to assure us that the words, despite their unconditional and categorical form, do not prevent the state from enacting "reasonable regulations" in the interest of public safety. All sensibleness consists in this refusal to accept God’s unconditioned command as the binding ideal that distinguishes right from wrong, to build maneuvering room into it so that we can still think well of ourselves while pursuing our own will. According to Kierkegaard, it is human sensibleness that believes that
To require the unconditioned of human beings is basically madness, a ludicrous exaggeration that, like all extremes, as any sensible person easily sees, takes revenge by producing an effect the very opposite of what it aims at. All human wisdom consists in this glorious and golden principle: to a certain degree, there is a limit, or in this ‘both-and,’ and ‘also’; the unconditioned is madness. The mark of mature earnestness is precisely this: it insists that the requirement shall be of such a nature that a person can with pleasure and satisfaction amply meet it though steady effort. Obviously, what none of has done none of us, of course, can do; and if none of us can do it, then the requirement must be changed according to what we have shown we can do by having done it – more cannot be required. Therefore, we insist on a Christianity that can be brought into harmony with all the rest of our life, corresponding to the change that has occurred in the human race through increasing enlightenment and culture. . . .
Who will deny that the world has changed! For the better? Well, that remains a question. . . . But it is eternally certain that nothing so offends sensibleness as the unconditioned, and . . . the immediately obvious mark of this is that sensibleness will never unconditionally acknowledge any requirement but continually claims itself to be the one that declares what kind of requirement is to be made.6
If you are like me, it is sensibleness you will feel welling up within you when you read Christ’s words to "resist not evil." It is sensibleness that will question whether they really mean what they seem to say, that will hasten to assure you that there are, there must be, just causes for which violence and resistance are righteous, that will not be willing to accept that we cannot avenge our murdered citizens, or bring the men responsible to justice, believing that somewhere, somehow, there must be maneuvering room in Christ’s command to love one’s enemies sufficient to kill them.
It is sensibleness that renders Tolstoy’s work an obscure volume relegated to the status of a curiosity penned by a great novelist who should have stuck to writing fiction. People do not try to answer his arguments. They are just sensibly ignored. When the Massachusetts preacher, Adin Ballou, died in 1890, after spending fifty years of his life writing about and preaching non-resistance based on Christ’s teaching, his obituary in the Religio-Philosophical Journal made no mention of this his life’s work. Sensible, surely, for why malign the man by pointing out how much of his life was spent in foolishness, and why disturb readers by raising concerns over what can only be an improper interpretation of the meaning of Christ’s command?
Similarly, you are not likely to hear Matthew 5 : 38-45 preached this, the next or any other weekend soon, though if the Christian religion were supposed to have relevance to men’s lives, it would appear to be timely.
For those who can accept and have the courage to pursue it, however, the standard has been laid down. While we may admit (I admit) that we do not (I do not) feel Christian love for our enemies, we can at least partially act as required: we can refuse to go to war; we can refuse to try to bring the perpetrators to justice. And if we cannot quite bring ourselves to heed Christ’s counsel in full, perhaps we can at least take George Washington’s advice to avoid foreign entanglements, bring our troops home from across the globe, stop selling arms to foreign nations and cease meddling in foreign affairs. Not, be it noted, because we hope or believe that we will thereby gain release from further terrorist assaults. Those who destroyed the World Trade Center hate us, and it is possible that nothing we can do will change that, and that they will not stop until they exhaust themselves in their hate. If it is to be done, it must be done only because it is the right thing to do. And this would be a good start: to not go to war.
There is one other consideration that ought compel those of us who believe in God to give this matter the thought it deserves. That is the knowledge that, although God is longsuffering and of great mercy, He by no means clears the guilty, but visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation.7 President Bush is warning us that this war will not be over soon. But I wonder how far his vision extends.
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), translated by Constance Garnett, Nebraska University Press, ©1984, at p. 243.
Ibid, at pp. 241 – 242.
Ibid, at p. 244.
Ibid, at 259.
Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon "Christendom" (1854-1855), translated by Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, © 1944, tenth printing, 1991, p. 219.
Soren Kierkegaard, For Self-Examination and Judge For Yourself!, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton University Press, © 1990, pp. 154 – 155.
Exodus 34 : 7; Numbers 14 : 18.
September 21, 2001
Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in mid-town Manhattan. His website is www.nationofcowards.net.
Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com ( used for educational purposes only)
Transforming Credits- Anchor
A compilation
Download Audio (7.29MB)
Transferring credits can be a maddening process.
I experienced this once. I started seminary in one place and then we moved to start [a] church, so I had to end up changing schools. And sure enough, some of the credits that I earned at the first school wouldn’t transfer to the other. It was frustrating, to say the least. It felt like my scholastic achievements were for nothing.
There’s a similar credit transfer problem that happens in the kingdom of God when it comes to our accomplishments. It can be even more frustrating and maddening because we’re so accustomed to operating according to the world’s standards of measuring success. But it’s something we have to take to heart because it’s the way God works.
The credits of men on earth don’t transfer to the kingdom of God. What I mean is that just because the world says you’re successful doesn’t mean you’ve impressed God one bit.
God really doesn’t care about how much money you’ve earned.
Where you’ve gotten your degree from.
Or what letters make up the title in front of your name.
The things that we think are major accomplishments aren’t to God.
For at least two reasons.
First, it’s kind of hard to brag to a God who spoke the universe into existence. I just can’t see God being blown back by our résumé. Especially when the source of all of our accomplishments is Him. Also, it’s kind of insulting to His grace to think that any amount of achievement could earn the love and favor that has already been achieved for you.
Second, I don’t think God is looking for the same things we are. If you take a cursory look through the Bible, these were the kinds of people and things that stood out to Him:
A young shepherd on the backside of nowhere whose heart was after Him (1 Samuel 16).
The faith of a man who shouldn’t have had any (Luke 7:1–10).
The meager but total generosity of a peasant woman compared to the lavish but incomplete giving of the rich around her (Luke 21:1–4).
I’m not saying you need to downgrade your job. Or make yourself poor. Or that your success and accomplishments can’t be used for God’s glory.
I’m just saying that you shouldn’t assume that you’re at the front of the line to be used for His glory because of them. Besides, in God’s order of things, the front isn’t necessarily where you want to be anyway:
So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Matthew 20:16.1
*
Someone was wondering how the Lord looked at them—how He saw them when He looked at their life, what His evaluation was. They didn’t feel so great about themselves or their accomplishments.
Here is what He told them. If this resonates in your heart and you can imagine Jesus saying this to you, then let this be an encouragement to you, too, because Jesus has enough love to go around. Or you can ask Him for His personal words just for you.
Jesus said:
Let Me tell you what I see when I look at you.
I see My beloved child. As a parent gazes into the eyes of his child and feels nothing but love, so I look upon you. I feel such pride in seeing how you’ve grown from a child to adulthood, and the wise and mature choices that you’ve made over the years.
I see a yielded heart, one who has said yes to Me time and time again, even when you felt incapable or as if you didn’t have the strength to go on.
I see a sacrificial life lived for Me. You’ve laid your all on the altar of sacrifice countless times, even though it cost you dearly.
I see one who has been willing to follow Me no matter where I lead, who has had the faith to take the steps I charted for you, even though you often couldn’t clearly see the path ahead or what the final destination would be.
I see an unselfish and giving soul, one who puts the needs of others before your own and gives even to your hurt.
I see a humble vessel who has been willing to go through My refining fires so that I could make of you even finer gold.
I see one who is strong in faith, even though you may feel differently. Your faith has endured the test of time; you’ve stayed true to My calling, to the still, small voice speaking to your heart, to the fundamentals and the foundation principles that I’ve taught you these many years. I know that your faith is built on a solid rock and will not be easily tossed to and fro.
I see My honored messenger. You’ve given your life to the cause of spreading My message of love to others so that they too can find the joy of My salvation.
When you’re tempted to wonder if your accomplishments have been valuable or whether you have lived your faith well, just remember that I see your life differently than the world does. I see the true values of your life that you and others may overlook or that may not be as plainly visible—qualities that make a character that is worthy of admiration, contributions that will live on in the lives of others and will continue to make a difference in the world.2
Published on Anchor June 2012. Read by Simon Peterson. Music by Michael Dooley.
1 By Pastor Steven Furtick.
2 By Maria Fontaine. Originally published February 2011.
Download Audio (7.29MB)
Transferring credits can be a maddening process.
I experienced this once. I started seminary in one place and then we moved to start [a] church, so I had to end up changing schools. And sure enough, some of the credits that I earned at the first school wouldn’t transfer to the other. It was frustrating, to say the least. It felt like my scholastic achievements were for nothing.
There’s a similar credit transfer problem that happens in the kingdom of God when it comes to our accomplishments. It can be even more frustrating and maddening because we’re so accustomed to operating according to the world’s standards of measuring success. But it’s something we have to take to heart because it’s the way God works.
The credits of men on earth don’t transfer to the kingdom of God. What I mean is that just because the world says you’re successful doesn’t mean you’ve impressed God one bit.
God really doesn’t care about how much money you’ve earned.
Where you’ve gotten your degree from.
Or what letters make up the title in front of your name.
The things that we think are major accomplishments aren’t to God.
For at least two reasons.
First, it’s kind of hard to brag to a God who spoke the universe into existence. I just can’t see God being blown back by our résumé. Especially when the source of all of our accomplishments is Him. Also, it’s kind of insulting to His grace to think that any amount of achievement could earn the love and favor that has already been achieved for you.
Second, I don’t think God is looking for the same things we are. If you take a cursory look through the Bible, these were the kinds of people and things that stood out to Him:
A young shepherd on the backside of nowhere whose heart was after Him (1 Samuel 16).
The faith of a man who shouldn’t have had any (Luke 7:1–10).
The meager but total generosity of a peasant woman compared to the lavish but incomplete giving of the rich around her (Luke 21:1–4).
I’m not saying you need to downgrade your job. Or make yourself poor. Or that your success and accomplishments can’t be used for God’s glory.
I’m just saying that you shouldn’t assume that you’re at the front of the line to be used for His glory because of them. Besides, in God’s order of things, the front isn’t necessarily where you want to be anyway:
So the last will be first, and the first will be last. Matthew 20:16.1
*
Someone was wondering how the Lord looked at them—how He saw them when He looked at their life, what His evaluation was. They didn’t feel so great about themselves or their accomplishments.
Here is what He told them. If this resonates in your heart and you can imagine Jesus saying this to you, then let this be an encouragement to you, too, because Jesus has enough love to go around. Or you can ask Him for His personal words just for you.
Jesus said:
Let Me tell you what I see when I look at you.
I see My beloved child. As a parent gazes into the eyes of his child and feels nothing but love, so I look upon you. I feel such pride in seeing how you’ve grown from a child to adulthood, and the wise and mature choices that you’ve made over the years.
I see a yielded heart, one who has said yes to Me time and time again, even when you felt incapable or as if you didn’t have the strength to go on.
I see a sacrificial life lived for Me. You’ve laid your all on the altar of sacrifice countless times, even though it cost you dearly.
I see one who has been willing to follow Me no matter where I lead, who has had the faith to take the steps I charted for you, even though you often couldn’t clearly see the path ahead or what the final destination would be.
I see an unselfish and giving soul, one who puts the needs of others before your own and gives even to your hurt.
I see a humble vessel who has been willing to go through My refining fires so that I could make of you even finer gold.
I see one who is strong in faith, even though you may feel differently. Your faith has endured the test of time; you’ve stayed true to My calling, to the still, small voice speaking to your heart, to the fundamentals and the foundation principles that I’ve taught you these many years. I know that your faith is built on a solid rock and will not be easily tossed to and fro.
I see My honored messenger. You’ve given your life to the cause of spreading My message of love to others so that they too can find the joy of My salvation.
When you’re tempted to wonder if your accomplishments have been valuable or whether you have lived your faith well, just remember that I see your life differently than the world does. I see the true values of your life that you and others may overlook or that may not be as plainly visible—qualities that make a character that is worthy of admiration, contributions that will live on in the lives of others and will continue to make a difference in the world.2
Published on Anchor June 2012. Read by Simon Peterson. Music by Michael Dooley.
1 By Pastor Steven Furtick.
2 By Maria Fontaine. Originally published February 2011.
