Ethiopia Hunger Relief Effort

Dear Westwood Baptist Church Family,

I want to commend you and thank you for your fantastic generosity and compassion demonstrated in our recent Hunger Relief Offering for the Ethiopian believers in Merebete.  Your contributions totaled $5571.61.  This contribution will feed over 200 families as well as give the churches food resources to assist other people in their communities who are suffering, which opens the door for the gospel to be delivered to hurting hearts.  Your amazing response indicates the depth of your compassion and commitment to these fellow believers. Your beautiful heart is showing in amazing ways and I am overwhelmed by your response and I know the churches will be also. 

John and RK left yesterday afternoon to take the money you gave and begin buying and distributing food.  They will return Friday, August 12.  We will take time during our morning worship services on the 14^th for John and RK to report on their trip.  The time they will spend on the ground is more than they will need to distribute food, so they will also be making preparations for the two upcoming trips in October.  Please pray for their safety and their usefulness in the expansion work of the kingdom of God. 

Feeding on His grace and your fellowship,

Rick Dees

God's Passion, Power and Pleasure in Our Humble Attitude

Our attitude toward one another is significant in the eyes of God.  Jesus repeatedly told the disciples to love and serve each other.  Then He demonstrated the command through the greatest of love and service by offering Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God.

It seems evident that Paul had this thought in mind when he wrote Philippians 2.  Through the truth of God becoming flesh, His sacrificial death and victorious resurrection, Paul teaches the attitudes Christians should live toward each other and the means of doing so.   Let’s first look at the example Paul gives for his command, “Have this mind among yourselves” (Philippians 2:5).

The example is Christ.  Paul says this about Jesus, “who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped” (v.6).  The front of this verse states that Jesus existed as God, ‘form’ meaning of the same essence.  The last part of this verse affirms the first.  He was so truly God that it was not a consideration in His mind to be concerned with losing any portion of being God by becoming flesh. So at no time did Jesus cease to be fully God, even when He became flesh, the God-man.  An illustration may be helpful in understanding the humility reflected in Jesus becoming flesh.

Suppose Usain Bolt, the fastest human, were to agree to race with me in a three legged race.  In doing so, he would be in company with one of the slowest humans on earth.  In agreeing to tie himself to me, Bolt would be accepting my limitations.  The same is true for Jesus, who by becoming flesh accepted the limitations of flesh for the sake of our redemption.  In doing so, Jesus considered others significance over His own.  Paul’s encouragement to us is to be humble as Christ was humble.  How can we apply this principle to our life?

First, God is at work in you.  This is by the Spirit of God. His aim at working in you is to propel out of you spiritual fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), for His pleasure.  Setting our minds on the pleasure of God rather than our own breaks out into the greatest pleasure we can experience.  It equals the opposite of the above illustration.  When we bind ourselves to Christ, He enables us to live out His passion, by His power, for His pleasure.

In my next post I will share three qualities that move humility closer to becoming habitual.

Defining Pride

Pride is a killer of relationships, especially the relationship between us as believers and Christ.  I need a daily dose of humility and found it today in a quote from Augustine:

“Pride is the craving for undeserved glory.  And this is undeserved glory:  when the soul abandons the One it should cling to for sufficiency and becomes self reliant.” – Augustine, City of God, 14.13.

What are the significant quotes, both of Scripture and others that remind you to rely on God?  Leave yours in the comment box.  Like I said, I need a daily dose so your reminders will be helpful to me and hopefully to others.