The following is an extended form of the notes I made from one of the sermons preached this morning at TCM take on 2 Corinthians 2:12-24. I claim no originality for the content!
In this world you have to impress the world to be accepted within it, this could be anything like wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, have the latest gadget, maybe even if you look the right way you can make it into stardom… The trouble with this is that if we go down this route we can so often feel a failure, simply because we just can’t keep up with what the world wants of us… there is always just one more demand from us. As a result of this inability to keep up with what the world wants Paul, the author of the letter to the Corinthians, writes this letter not shouting on his abilities, but instead upon his weaknesses because it is through Paul’s weakness that God’s strength is shown.
When Jesus hit Paul, then known as Saul, on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9) God completely turned his life around, took him from someone who was torturing Christians to someone who lived completely for God. This was seen completely in his life, and this is how we can glorify God, by living an authentic life; living for Jesus, and glorifying Him through it.
The thing is that we are only able to do this through God’s grace, this is not something that we can do on our own, we are sinful creatures prone to depravity. We are weak, yet God takes our willing heart and lifts us up so that through our weaknesses and our failures God can be seen and praised.
We also need to be looking at this life from an eternal point of view… looking at the short term; i.e. our time on earth it becomes so easy to fall into the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world says live life for now because this is it, there is nothing after. Rather by looking at things from God’s view sees something so much more exciting after this life, something worth living for now.
If you are curious about living for something more have a look at this resource, it is called Two Ways to Live, six very simple, short, pages giving the background to Christianity. Well worth a look: matthiasmedia.com.au
Post changelog
- 2020-05-17 – Remove old insecure image references, hotlinks, etc
- 2020-05-17 – Decouple gulp from SCSS generation
- 2018-12-24 – Generate (but not use yet) RWD images
- 2018-09-01 – Importing all the old blog posts
