Friday, April 27, 2007

Honor

My friend Cyndi penned some wonderful insight...

"A few years ago I was perusing the second-hand book sale put on the Alzheimer's Society in the mall I work at. I by-passed the usual - romance novels galore, westerns, old text books and there with a light shining on it (just kidding ) was a book called A Tale of Three Virtues - Cures for Colorless Christianity. Well, for 10 cents I could pass that one by. The 3 Virtues discussed are Light Humility, Hard Honor and Open Allegiance. After prayer last night I was re-reading the Hard Honour chapter.

To quickly surmise - how does God bestow Honor? Well he hones in on our redeemable qualities. He doesn't ignore all the bad ones but that is not His focus. His focus is to magnify what we do right, bless it and bestow His love and honor.

Example: Abraham - big time liar (she's my sister, honest) and not very good about looking after people (Hagar). Yet God sees that spark of faith and works with that. He Honours Abraham's belief in Him and he does that by answering his prayer (not only will I give you a son, I will give you more relatives that you can count in the sky) and he honours Abraham by acknowledging his faith by writing it down for all the world to read about.

And what about Rahab? Starts off with a bad reputation being a prostitute and if you have ever met one they can be a little rough around the edges. She is not even an Israelite. Yet God takes that belief she has in the Jewish God and honors that by again blessing her with answering her prayer and saving herself and her family and publicly acknowledging it in scripture.
Sounds a lot like Scandalous Grace.

So again, I encourage you all to Honor people. Hone in on their good qualities and magnify them. Leave the weaknesses for them and God to deal with. And publicly acknowledge their attributes (let them know it). And most important - Honour God."


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like it!! Great thoughts and great advice and instruction. Cyndi is always a woman of wisdom.

Jen said...

Holly

I have nominated you for the "thinking Blog" award...check out my latest post to see why.

Love you.

Anonymous said...

hey holly,
i just caught up with some of your blogs. i'm going to use some of these tho'ts on honor in my sermon this week. it relates to the message God has put on my heart - never know where God's going to bless me with "resource info" :-) - linda