Recently a dear friend and DramaShare contributor was going through a downtime, a time of which most in ministry can relate. This is the email I sent to that person, I thought this might possibly hit a chord with others as well.
As Christians its true that what we do is for the Lord, that’s as it should be.
But as a very wise man once told me . . . in addition to doing things for the Lord . . . we have to remember that all we do is for ourselves as well. When I give a gift to someone, including “gifts” that I “give” to the Lord . . . there needs to be a gift to our self . . . It could be a gift of a sense of accomplishment, a gift of thanks for accepting the gifts God has given us . . .
Or it could be that we give our self a gift of . . PRIDE.
And yes, although some would tell us that pride in a Christian is wrong and should be avoided . . . those people, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, are incredibly wrong.
If we are not brimming over with pride for what we do well THROUGH THE GIFTS GOD HAS GIVEN US . . then in effect we are saying God has done a lousy job of gifting. And I don’t think God hands out lousy gifts.
As a writer (who never used that gift for the first almost 50 years of my life) I often think . . “is my writing of a sufficiently high quality to expect people around the world, unknown to me not only using, but paying good money for the use of that writing.” And I can get all self-effacing and fearful over that. And perhaps that form of reacting is the WORST PRIDE OF ALL.
We forget that if God is not in it then it’s not, at least over the long term, going to happen.
Since I love you, and believe you love me too, I can be honest and blunt . . and you will still love me through it all:
I sense you are very down at the moment, and for very good reasons, you are going through a huge DOWN SPOT in your life.
But I think you are “giving exclusively to the Lord” without giving an important BUNCH back to yourself.
Not sure if you remember, BUT I DO, the excellent articles you wrote for DramaShare several years ago. . . . They did a lot of good for unknown people around the world who read those articles. So that was your gift to hundreds of people AT THAT TIME.
BUT . . .
Are you aware that those articles, (which were sent out in our newsletters back in the day) . . . were then placed in the archives, showing up in the SITE MAP area on our website, AND ARE BEING READ AND LEARNED FROM NOW AND INTO THE FUTURE?
The Lord is continuing in blessing people with the gifts you were, and are, providing THROUGH HIS GIFTING OF YOU. And, frankly and bluntly, if you aren’t incredibly PROUD of that . . . you are kinda sorta out of line and need to have a huge injection of PRIDE.
Hope some of this makes sense and that you will be as proud and grateful for what you are continuing to do as I am, (and I believe your God is),
Your life certainly isn’t easy, but we can work on that after you give yourself a huge CHRISTIAN pat on the back!
