More Meetings?

I have been so busy lately. By that I mean I really have more to do right now than my usual workload. Like last night, I came home at almost eleven from a meeting and discovered that I still have a whole list of emails to respond to. And yesterday was a marathon of meetings. Well, it is not any diferrent today. In 45 minutes, I am off to another meeting and then another 2.30 pm meeting. There are days when I go six straight hours with meetings (with a lunch break) without coming up for a breath.

But before I go on another meeting marathon today, I just must blog this.

I don't want to die doing a meeting simply out of duty or boredom and never want anyone attending the meetings I lead to leave uninspired. So, I love a meeting that has an agenda; that gives a meeting positive energy. A meeting that stretches the mind and gives a lift to what is next possible.

Ever had one of those meetings where you don't have the guts to come right out and ask: why are we meeting? So you play detective and you can't figure it out for the life of you. An hour later you're still clueless. Everyone looks like they are saying what is politically correct but deep inside they have another story brewing? Those meetings can drain the life of you and you come home empty. I never like those meetings and if you are going from one meeting to another that is of that kind, it will be a matter of time that something in you dies.

One of the simple lessons I've learned is to try to ascertain the objective of the meeting before the meeting. One of the things I wrestle with is this. I tend to be a little more task-oriented than relationship-oriented in the meeting context. But for a meeting to carry life, there must be the balance between work and relationships. It adds fun to the functions of a meeting.

Anyway, here are a few meeting tips for people with busy schedules:

1) Pray for the meeting before the meeting - it can turn an ordinary meeting into a divine appointment.

2) Let your team know upfront what to expect and what the meeting is going to be about - it helps them come a little prepared.

3) Get to the point and don't beat around the bush

4) Ask lots of questions- just make people think. It helps them grow.

5) Remember that your time is the one of the greatest gifts you can give to people. Be wise. Be generous.

6) Finally, remember being busy is not equal to being significant. Your significance is in who you are in Christ and not how busy you are for Him.

Enjoy your meetings! I am off to enjoying mine today.

Not Despising Those Small Things

Isaiah further declares that Christ will not quench the smoking flax, or wick, but will fan it up till it flames. In a smoking flax there is but little light that is weak, quite unable to build up into a strong flame, and mixed with smoke. As God’s children, when we have been bruised either by our own sin or circumstance or sickness and pain, there remains in us a small measure of grace and faith mixed with much doubt and confusion, anger and resentment. But Christ will not quench this smoking flax.

At that point of pain and perplexities, faith may be as `a grain of mustard seed' (Matt. 17:20). Just an insignificant grain but with the great potential of growth, nonetheless. Did you realise that those things that are of the greatest perfection are the longest in coming into their growth? Man is God’s highest and most perfect creature, and he comes into maturity by little and little; as opposed to lesser things, as grass and mushrooms and the like, like Jonah's gourd – these spring up quickly , and then vanish just as quickly. The Christian is the God’s most prized creature in all the world, therefore h causes us to grow up by degrees.

We see in nature that a mighty oak tree rises from an acorn. So it is with a Christian, God’s oak of righteousness. In the small seeds of plants lie hidden both bulk and branches, bud and fruit. Likewise, all the glorious fireworks of zeal and holiness in you and I as God’s children have their beginning from a few sparks, often found in a smoking flax.

So don’t be discouraged at the small beginnings of grace. Don’t despise the days of small beginnings. Don’t underestimate the potential in a dying flame. Christ values us by what we shall be, and by what we are destined to be in him. We call a little plant a tree, because it is growing up to be so. `Who has despised the day of small beginnings?' (Zech. 4:10). Christ would not have us despise little things.

The glorious angels do not disregard attending on little ones. You may be weak with a struggling faith in your pain and shame but yet in God’s eyes, there is worth in that small, struggling faith. It is Christ that raises the worth of little and mean places and persons. Bethlehem was the least (Mic. 5:2; Matt. 2:6), and yet not the least; the least in itself, not the least in respect that Christ was born there. The second temple (Hag. 2:9) came short of the outward magnificence of the former; yet it was more glorious than the first because Christ came into it. The Lord of the temple came into his own temple. The pupil of the eye is very little, yet sees the entire open sky all at once. A pearl, though little, yet is of much esteem. Nothing in the world is of so good use as the least grain of grace. A smoking flax he will not cause to die out!

Who are the bruised reeds?

Who are the bruised reeds?

The bruised here are not just those who are brought low by the pain they suffer because of circumstances or people. But the bruised are those who are brought to see their own sins. It is our sins that bruise us most of all. When your conscience is under the guilt of sin, then your soul senses God’s displeasure and anger. This bruises the soul. It bleeds with pain. It is stricken. And we hate that bruising of the soul. We either seek to ignore the pain or make light of it or find some excuse to stay away from it or rationalize it away (Rick Warren says to rationalize is to believe a rational lie!)

But the more we seek to medicate and silence the pain of that bruising, the more we disqualify ourselves from the mercies of God. What we must come to is to be content with nothing when the soul is bruised with sin but with the mercy of God.

He has wounded the soul through the conscience, and he must heal (Hos. 6:1). The Lord who has bruised me deservedly for my sins must bind up my heart again.

The bruising is good for the soul. Why? Because a man truly bruised will judge his sin the greatest evil, and the mercies of God the greatest good. So a man bruised in his soul for his son becomes hungry for God’s mercy. He looks to God who will not break a bruised reed. He trembles at the Word of God (Isa. 66:2).

So don’t minimize the effect of God’s bruising with conviction of sin. Don’t medicate the pain. Run to the God of mercy. Find His mercy. Let the mercies of God bring you soul healing.

But how shall we come to kind of thinking? First, we must conceive the bruising either as a state into which God brings us, or as a responsibility we must take upon ourselves. Both are necessary. We must join with God in bruising ourselves. When he humbles us, let us humble ourselves, and not stand out against him, and be disqualified for His mercy.

Flow with Christ in all his bruising disciplines, knowing that all his dealing towards us is to cause us to return to our own hearts. We need to mourn our own sinfulness. We must lay siege to the hardness of our own hearts, and het the soul to not accept any peace with the sinfulness of the heart.

We must look to Christ, who was bruised for us, look on him whom we have pierced with our sins. But all these directions will not prevail, unless God by his Spirit convinces us deeply, setting our sins before us, and driving us to the place of conviction. Once convicted, we are bruised. Then we will cry out for mercy. Conviction will breed contrition, and this leads to humiliation. Therefore desire God that he would bring a clear and a strong light into all the corners of our souls, and accompany it with a spirit of power to lay our hearts low. All so that we will cry out for mercy and then find His mercy flooding our soul, cleansing us of sin and healing us from the inside out!

Fresh Mercy

Isaiah declares that Christ will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. And there is more meant in those words than we can truly fathom.

The last seven or eight years I made it my goal to be a student of the mercy of God. I live everyday drawing on His mercies. He says there are new every day and every new day I long to discover another new facet of His mercy. Spurgeon once said that mercy is God’s darling trait. It is the one virtue the Lord loves to manifest in our lives.

We humans know how to exercise some mercy. A doctor will give attention to a stubborn patient who continually abuses his body. It is mercy. A dad will continue to provide for his wayward son. That is mercy. If we are mere streams through which mercies flow, how much more with God, the very spring of mercy? We cannot think that there is more mercy in us than in God, who plants the affection of mercy in us in the first place.

Let’s behold and consider the Christ who shows mercy to all bruised reeds, for a moment. Consider the names he has borrowed from the mildest of creatures, such as lamb and hen, to show us His tender mercies. He came so that he should `bind up the broken hearted' (Isa. 61:1). At his baptism the Holy Spirit rested on him in the shape of a dove, to show that he should be a dove-like, gentle Mediator.

When he walked this earth, his heart yearned when he saw the people `as sheep having no shepherd' (Matt. 9:36)! He never turned anyone away from him who came to him. He shed tears for those that shed his blood, and now he makes intercession in heaven for those who are weak, standing between them and God's anger. That’s mercy.

He is a meek king; he will admit mourners into his presence, a king of poor and afflicted persons. He is the prince of peace (Isa. 9:6). He is God and as God He cannot be tempted and yet as man he was tempted that he might `help them that are tempted' (Heb. 2:18)?

What mercy may we not expect from so gracious a Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5)? He is a physician who is the healer of all diseases, especially at the binding up of a broken heart. He died that he might heal our souls with a plaster of his own blood, and by that death save us from our own destruction. Oh, what mercy!

You wake up in the morning with accusive thoughts swimming through your mind. Thoughts like, I am not worthy of God. I am not good enough. I don’t deserve any good thing.A bruised reed he will not break. Pause for a moment. Behold the Christ: in Him you have mercy and that mercy is fresh and new, every day.

Why Suffer Bruises

Why does God allow us to be bruised? Isn’t pain to be avoided at all cost? Isn’t it God’s heart to protect us from all kinds of harm? Can’t the Lord keep us from becoming bruised?

Bruising is necessary for us to experience the great mercies of God. The Holy Spirit uses this bruising to level pride, and high thoughts, so that we may understand what is really in the hidden recesses of our soul. We all like sheep love to wander away from God when life is good and become proud and independent and we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can mange on our own on our self-sufficiency until we are bruised. Then we begin to really think, and we come home to ourselves with the prodigal (Luke 15:17). It is a very hard thing to bring a dull and an evasive heart to cry out to God for mercy. Our hearts, like criminals, until they be beaten down, never cry for the mercy of the judge.

We can never out-smart sin. Sin has a way of revisiting our lives again and again. We therefore suffer many sinful relapses. But it is the bruising that the Holy Spirit uses to bring down the high thoughts (2 Cor 10:5) we have of ourselves – that sin is not such a big issue; that we can out-smart sin. So when the Holy Spirit does a work of conviction in our lives together with some affliction, we come under God’s healing and purging power. We are bruised to be healed.

In our Christian journey, we need bruising so that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks. Even reeds need bruising, because of pride in our lives, and to let us see that we live each day by His mercy. Peter was bruised when he wept bitterly (Matt. 26:75). This reed, till he met with this bruise, said presumptuously, `Though everyone else forsakes you, I will not' (Matt. 26:33). David was bruised enough to humbly make his confessions in Psalm 32. Hezekiah complains that God had `broken his bones' as a lion (Isa. 38:13). And Paul needed the messenger of Satan to inflict him lest he becomes over-confident in his own abilities (2 Cor. 12:7).

So we learn that we must not pass too harsh a judgment upon ourselves or others when God exercises us with bruising upon bruising. There must be a conformity to Christ, who `was bruised for us' (Isa. 53:5) that we may know how much we are identified with Him.

It is a lie that Christians should not suffer because they are in Christ and Jesus has already been punished for us on the Cross. Yes, Jesus was punished on the Cross for our sins and therefore God will never punish us for our sins anymore. But God when God allows you to be bruised He is doing a gracious, good work with you. He is making you more Christ-like. He is changing you from the inside out.