We live in a society that exalts excellence. That can be a good thing. Too often, though, our emphasis is wrong. Excellence should be the outcome—or the ends; not the means.
We can strive to act with excellence, doing lots of planning and performing to do works of excellence, but produce little fruit. That’s because our doing or our focus is on our performance for the sake of our performance to feel good about our performance. Man judges by performance. God, however, is not impressed with our performance. He seeks to be our excellence.
RELEVANCE
The early disciples experienced the power of God because they acknowledged their weaknesses in humility, and depended on God to be their strength. In turn, God showed up in demonstration of the Spirit with far greater power than any amount of their excellence could have mustered. They saw the truth of the word spoken by the prophet Zechariah come to life: “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).
The apostle Paul learned that his incredible success did not come from his own strength or abilities, but the grace and power of God.
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5).
Paul confessed that he wasn’t a man of great oratory skills. He even stated how it was common knowledge that he was weak in stature and his physical presence hardly conveyed a position of strength. “For his letters,” they say, “are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10-11). What he did possess was the grace of Christ and anointing of the Holy Spirit. That came from totally identifying with the resurrection power of Christ.
Can God give you grace at work so you can succeed in your job or business? Years ago I found myself in a place where I experienced the kind of criticism that Paul did. I worked in sales, but my management hardly thought I was “polished” or aggressive enough. God’s grace was with me, however. He gave me much success. After being promoted into a national sales management role, the CEO confessed to a client that, “Harvey knows how to make people who hate us love us.”
REFLECT AND RELATE
Walking with a contrary disposition than that of the world takes courage. Ask God to give you the grace to walk in humility of flesh, but the power of His Spirit.
REFERENCES
2 Corinthians 12:10