Are You Ready to Grow Smaller?

[This piece, originally posted earlier this evening on Facebook, is inspired by Matthew, chapter 18.]

When God came into the world to save us from ourselves, He didn't overpower us. He didn't make war. He didn't go into politics. He didn't establish a financial empire. Those, He knows, are all the ways of death, the ways of people who wrongly believe that this world can offer us freedom or salvation or meaning.

In Jesus of Nazareth, God became a sinless servant who died on a cross at the hands of every human being. That was His plan...and because of our darkened minds, we played right into His nail-pierced hands.

The God we know in Jesus always chooses what the world sees as weak, insignificant, and small to accomplish His purposes.

He doesn't do it through military conquest.

Nor through political power.

Nor with big bucks.

And He absolutely doesn't do it through preachers who promise unrepentant people success and prosperity.

Instead, God uses every believer in Christ who, convicted of their own need of Christ, call others to repentance and the faith in Jesus that alone can save us from sin, death, and darkness.

A dying world still tells us the lie that we can conquer all if we get bigger and stronger.

But freedom from all that kills and destroys us only comes to those who to the small, disdained way of trusting in Jesus to do for us all that we clearly cannot do for ourselves.

The vulnerable and weak are better able to understand this; they know that they're not "all that," that they're not gods.

Our call from the God revealed in Jesus isn't to grow up to be big and strong, or independent and self-sufficient, but to become little children who trust in Christ alone.

The phenomenal song linked below, written by the late Mark Heard, and performed by the late Rich Mullins, is a reminder of the stupid futility of pushing ourselves to the top when real life is found in surrender to God's grace, His charity.

It's time for us grow down, to descend to true greatness, becoming children at the feet of the One Who has torn eternity open for all His little children. Are you ready to get small?