Well, I?m off to India again for two weeks of ministry. I have the wonderful opportunity to teach Indian leaders from the great city of New Delhi, to the rural regions of Kachhwa, to the southern environs of Bangalore. I?ll be traveling with my dear friend and Paul Tripp Ministries colleague, Malcolm Osborn.
I really do consider it a great honor to be given such an opportunity. In many ways these leaders are my heroes. They?re willing to minister for Christ at great personal cost.
I was thinking this morning about the long journey that?s ahead of us, landing us in a culture so fundamentally different from our own, and I was filled with a sense of the power and glory of God.
Why, you may ask? Because it hit me that I didn?t choose where I'd be born on this planet on which we live. Yet as I travel from the little spot on the globe where I live and arrive in India at the little spot on the globe where others live, I?ll still be in a spot that is ruled by the same God! And I?ll be ministering to people who are just as much his children as I am and who are just as aware of his presence as I am right here, right now!
This got me thinking of how many important things in our life we didn't choose:
- You didn?t choose the family you were born into.
- You didn?t choose the period of history you would live in.
- You didn?t choose the world events that would take place around you.
- You didn?t control the progress of science and knowledge, but you have benefited from both.
- You didn?t create the technology that has made your life easier and more comfortable.
- You didn?t choose what street you would grow up on.
- You didn?t choose what childhood school you would attend.
- You didn?t choose how healthy your body would be.
- You didn?t choose who your parents and siblings would be.
- You didn?t choose who would be your neighbor, your mayor, your president.
- You didn?t choose what the economic conditions would be around you.
- You didn?t choose how safe your environment would be.
- You didn?t choose how early you would be exposed to truth.
- You didn?t choose whether you would live in the first world or the third world.
- You didn?t choose what language you would grow up speaking.
- You didn?t choose what culture would shape your view of life.
When you really begin to access the sum total of your life, you can only end up with one conclusion. Here it is - God is great!
He is awesome in his wisdom, power, and glory. His magnificence reaches beyond the most descriptive and poetic ability of human language. His glory lives way beyond the boundaries of the human intellect to reason. But there?s something else to be said. Pay careful attention here. He?s great...and we?re not.
We?re all tempted to buy into the delusion of our own greatness and our own sovereignty. We really like to think that we?re in more control of more things than we actually are. And why do we do this? Because we?re terrified of the dependent danger of humble faith. We find it very hard to put ourselves in the hands of Another.
So what do we do? It?s an awful thing. We exaggerate our greatness and we minimize the Lord's. We take credit for what we didn?t produce and we fail to give him credit for what has come from his hands.
All of this works to make us more comfortable with a dangerous and delusional self-reliance.
So I?m thankful for the trip to India. Not just because I get to minister and to serve, but also because it forces me to be reminded once again of how small I actually am and how glorious God continues to be.
This trip invites me to recognize Glory and rest. How about resting with me?
May the Lord of it all be your Lord of rest!
God bless
Paul David Tripp
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