"I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off my beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting." Isaiah 50:6
The majority of God's children (mainly in the West) do not contain the rugged masculinity of Jesus Christ; they do not possess the backbone of the man of sorrows. Courage is when a person goes to their breaking point and does not break, and there is a breaking point that Jesus met and passed many times, a breaking point that we crumble with self-pity over--humiliation. From the Incarnation (Philippians 2:7, 8), to Gethsemane (Luke 22:42), to the passion of the Cross, Christ's life was marked as one of abject humiliation, of the Highest willingly being made the lowest. Have we lost the courage of the man of sorrows, the courage to rest in God at the price of humiliation before men?
"Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." (John 15:19) Are you prepared for the mock and scorn of the child of God? Are you prepared to be considered some horrible, alien thing in the eyes of men? Or are you prepared to be the friend of this world? Being friends with the world is easy because it cost nothing except your soul; nothing you hold dear and everything that is dear. God asks that you rest your soul in His hands and let all other things be humiliated: your pride, your rights, your self, your sin. You shun humiliation at your own risk.
"Make me a son of Your Love:
Purged pure and whole,
All of life redeemed,
All of life centered on You..."
-Jon Vowell
The majority of God's children (mainly in the West) do not contain the rugged masculinity of Jesus Christ; they do not possess the backbone of the man of sorrows. Courage is when a person goes to their breaking point and does not break, and there is a breaking point that Jesus met and passed many times, a breaking point that we crumble with self-pity over--humiliation. From the Incarnation (Philippians 2:7, 8), to Gethsemane (Luke 22:42), to the passion of the Cross, Christ's life was marked as one of abject humiliation, of the Highest willingly being made the lowest. Have we lost the courage of the man of sorrows, the courage to rest in God at the price of humiliation before men?
"Because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you." (John 15:19) Are you prepared for the mock and scorn of the child of God? Are you prepared to be considered some horrible, alien thing in the eyes of men? Or are you prepared to be the friend of this world? Being friends with the world is easy because it cost nothing except your soul; nothing you hold dear and everything that is dear. God asks that you rest your soul in His hands and let all other things be humiliated: your pride, your rights, your self, your sin. You shun humiliation at your own risk.
"Make me a son of Your Love:
Purged pure and whole,
All of life redeemed,
All of life centered on You..."
-Jon Vowell
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