This video clip about the value of ink will make you feel wealthy!

Scripture
For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. 2 Corinthians 4:6-7

Observation
What is the most expensive liquid on earth? Gas, vintage wine, or pure maple syrup? No, it is printer cartridge ink. If you don’t believe it just watch the video clip above. But what happens when the last precious drops of inkjet have sputtered out? We toss the cartridge away.

That’s a bit like us. Christ followers are filled with something quite extraordinary but we’re still just disposable packaging. When a person says “yes” to Christ do we have any idea of what happens on the inside?

Think of it this way. When I walk into a room I turn on a light switch. A sixty watt bulb gives me a useful pool of light. I’m busy with my work so I do not think of what that bulb is connected to. Wires run from that light to the breaker box, out to the wires in the street, to a transformer station, onto main lines, then to the power grid and into a coal, hydroelectric or nuclear powered turbine in a whirling room of machines producing inconceivable amounts of electrical energy. All I see are watts not megawatts. When I say yes to Jesus Christ what is happening in the reactor of heaven with the radiant Son of God in the presence of his Father, surrounded by angels and believers in a city of light glows inside of me. What is inside of any Christian is extraordinary. Inside a Christ follower is enough hope to outlast despair, healing to overcome disease, faith to conquer doubt, and grace to outlast hurt.

Yet for all this we are quite ordinary. We are fragile clay pots. Let’s put it into words that we can relate to. We are all disposable containers with the shelf life of a Coke can. We really aren’t that great. We are incredibly ordinary. All the packaging and branding known to Madison Avenue cannot change the fact that we are on the way to the recycling station.

Truly great people are marked by their ordinariness. What they speak, write, do, invest, touch, care, pray can be quite exceptional. But when I’ve met the truly great ones I’ve found an honesty with the disposable nature of their human existence. They are cardboard boxes and they know it. The goods in us are of God and all we offer is the paper bag to put them in. When we become relaxed with the faults, flaws and fractures of our lives then the glory of God can leak out.

I interviewed a number of pastors who had experienced burnout. All of them made the same comment. When they returned to their pulpits they were honest about their frailty. Instead of rejection, all of them heard comments from their people like this: “At last there is a preacher that I can relate to.” As much as people are hungering for the exceptional, there is something the everyday person that is so appealing.

Application
I need to be comfortable with my humanity while at the same time expecting the exceptional when God leaks out of me. I am exceptionally ordinary.

Prayer
Father, I cannot even begin to comprehend what is living inside of me. Just like we really don’t have a clue of the geothermal powers at work in the core of the earth just under our own feet, so I really don’t understand what you put into me when Jesus came into me to stay. Help me to be vulnerable enough to let that leak out. So often I want to dress it up to impress others. But I only end up plastering over the cracks that let your light shine through. Let the cracks in my life only make the glory of God more accessible to others. I accept the humanity you have made me with. Help me to be comfortable with my ordinariness in the presence of others so that they can access the glory of God in me. Amen.

Scripture
If they are planning and doing these things merely on their own, it will soon be overthrown. But if it is from God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You may even find yourselves fighting against God! Acts 5:38-39

Observation
Pushing uphill or momentum. Both are movement but differ greatly. With plenty of panting a man can push a bolder up a mountain. But what is that compared to a rock slide?

There are good ideas and then there are God-ideas. Both can swirl with activity and acclaim. But the test is time. If the activity stops with the person who started it, it is just another good idea. But if the thing grows no matter who is in charge then God is on the move.

Application
In 46 years of living I’ve had some good ideas and occasionally swept up in a God idea. I know which I’d rather have. I know what I want today. So my prayer today must not be, “Lord, bless what I am doing.” Instead I must pray, “Lord, place me where you are blessing.” I want to be swept away in an avalanche bigger than I am.

Prayer
Father, it is not about me, it’s about You. Most of the time I forget that, but let that not be the case today. It’s all about You. Would you please introduce me to the God-idea you have for my life? No that’s a wrong prayer. Let me try again. Do this: show me the God-idea you have for the world and then let me get caught up in it. For if it is really You, it must be bigger than me. Please introduce me to the good works you have planned in advance for me to do. Amen.

By the way for those who don’t know IKEA, it is a Swedish self-assemble furniture store, not to be missed when visiting Atlanta or LA.

The Bible Says

When he had proved himself faithful, you made a covenant with him to give him and his descendants the land….Nehemiah 9:8And now, our God, the great and mighty and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of unfailing love, do not let all the hardships we have suffered seem insignificant to you… Nehemiah 9:32

My Mind Thinks

Our track record is significant to the Lord. Our history of obedience and the chronicles of our heartaches all have bearing on the choices he makes with our lives.There are job interviews for doing God’s work. These employment interrogations do not take place around long board tables. Instead God examines the resume of our daily activity. Every moment we are under review. When we face the steep grades of life challenge how we perform under pressure makes a difference in what God has us to do next. Abraham went through just such an extensive candidacy to be the father of many nations. The encouragement of his story is that he was human with doubts and setbacks, but he kept moving on. After 25 years of job interviews, a head hunting team of three angels came to visit Abraham and Sarah and within a year Isaac was born.

There are also promotions for pain. No life pain is meaningless if we wrap it with faith. If the Lord puts our tears into a bottle, then our hardships do matter. The hardships mentioned in Nehemiah are actually all the result of the sin of the people and their just punishment. Yet even that matters to the Lord. He does not punish forever but he comes to remember us in mercy. The record of our punishment and the change of heart it brings does cause him to move our lives into better days.

My Heart Responds

I have courage to believe that all of my life matters to God and that all of it counts in what he will do next with me. He has seen my faithfulness mixed with the sawdust of my mistakes. He has seen the hardships of my life and the improvements they have brought to me. I believe God will open a door and it will be somehow connected with the track record of my life.

My Spirit Prays

Father, remember my track record and open a door for me. Amen.

Here I am at age 6 with a bandaged playground injury sitting on the knee of Uncle Henry, the man who was the grandfather I never had.

Scripture

So it is good to wait quietly
for salvation from the Lord.
And it is good for people to submit at an early age
to the yoke of his discipline:

For no one is abandoned
by the Lord forever.

Lamentations 3:26, 27, 31

Observation

What is the recipe for creating a person of success? We would think that it would begin with plenty of love, nurture, compassion, encouragement, grace, kindness, and all of the other best intentions we have for our children.

But experience with people shows again and again it is those who have started life with the gift of hardship who are often most successful. Some of the most successful people I have known began life in poverty, abuse, rejection, and pain. But it was that early hardship that introduced them to the secrets of life success.

“It is good for people to submit at an early age to the yoke of his discipline”, Jeremiah wrote.

For those who are passing through hardship in their early years, there is hope in these words. With the Lord there is no freedom from pain, but instead our hope is that our pain can be used for his purposes. Those God wishes to grace with success will often be given the gift of hardship early in life to teach them the lessons of success. Those who have suffered while they are young should have the most hope of better things to come. As A.W. Tozer said, “It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” (From Glorify his name! Root of the Righteous, chapter 39.)

Jeremiah was an old man as he wrote these words, but he could remember his years as a young prophet suffering great abuse. Now as an old man he was watching young men of Jerusalem suffering their first bruises in the aftermath of war. Jeremiah made quite a list of hardships a young man can experience that are signs of future success:

…walled in (verse 7)

…heavy chains (verse 7)

…blocked with a high stone wall (verse 9)

…target for his arrows (verse 12)

…arrows deep into my heart (verse 13)

…people laugh at me (verse 14)

…chew on gravel (verse 16)

…rolled in the dust (verse 16)

But still Jeremiah wrote,

Yet I still dare to hope
when I remember this:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends
His mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning. (verses 21-23)

It seems that the best view of the Lord comes not at the top, but from the bottom.

I remember when I first moved to Australia, living amongst the tall gum trees of the Dandenong Mountains. I went for a walk with my camera to take pictures to send to my family in America. I wanted to give them some sense of the slender stature of the eucalypts of Australia. I took my Kodak Instamatic and placed it at the base of the tree looking upward through the branches to the crown. When the pictures were developed I discovered that trees are best appreciated not from a distance but from the bottom. As the camera lens captures the slender trunk and waving branches we can get a feel for how mighty a tree can be. And so it is with the Lord. His greatness of mercy so fresh every sunrise is seen best not from the high blessings of life but from the low hardships.

Application

I must embrace my hardships if I am to be successful in life. Success begins when I don’t lose heart with my early failures but see them as but the precursors of success.

Prayer

Father, use all that I have experienced in life both good and bad to prepare me for better days to come. Amen.