Inner Beauty is of a Gentle and Quiet Spirit
Do you notice what spills out of your life when someone offends you? What offends you? What spills out of you when people run into you? Are you generous with them or frustrated and wanting to pay them back? It is our flesh that rises up in offense, self-protection or manipulation to get our way.
We see a story of this with Abner
who serves Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth as the head commander in 2 Samuel 3. Rather than being grateful for living out his
calling, Abner grew prideful and began strengthening his own position in Saul’s
house. It was not good enough to be 2nd,
he wanted to have all the power.
Ish-Bosheth, also wanting all the power for himself as he was living out
his calling, accuses Abner of sleeping with his father’s concubine as a form of
treason.
Notice the one was paranoid about
losing their power and wanting to protect it and the other was concerned with
expanding his power. Both were thinking totally
of themselves and not living for God, grateful, as they fulfilled their purpose. Abner became so offended (arrogance) that he
determined to turn the entire kingdom over to David, Ish-Bosheth’s competitor,
and serve him. He went there and
secured himself a position with David as chief commander and determined to turn
the kingdom over to him.
But in the process, Joab rose up
and killed Abner to protect his own position.
When he did, Ish-Bosheth lost courage as he counted on Abner to protect
him. This left him wide open for others,
hungry for power and wealth, to kill Ish-Bosheth and bring his head to David in
hopes of getting something for it. And
instead, they were put to death by David as he refused to take part in their
evil.
While Ish-Bosheth, Abner, and Joab were all living out their purpose, they were doing it in their own strength to accomplish their own glory. They were trying to be filled by it and not only left dry and empty, but failed to fully live into their purpose of who God called them to be. Their enemies swept them away.
If they could have just been quiet and gentle rather than offended, imagine how the story could have ended. It was their offense and trying to control and manipulate their circumstances to gain power that caused them to lose the very thing they tried to obtain. It illusively slipped through their fingers and they were swept away by the flood of evil that came their way.
David often proclaimed that, had
the Lord not been on their side, their enemies would have swept them away. More than once, he was engulfed in the midst
of evil and no harm came to him. He
proclaimed in Psalm 121:7-8, “The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will
watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now
and forevermore.”
When difficulty hits, we may want
to put up a good front and pretend that everything is fine. Fake it until we
make it. What we really are trying to do is control our
circumstances. There is only one safe
place to stand when the enemy seeks to devour you—it is in the presence of the
Lord. It is not out of our righteousness,
but as David proclaims, by His great mercy that we look to Him (Psalm
123:2).
When we pretend, what we end up is
this false-self we portray to others that is very different from who we truly
are. We are not free to be authentic but
we become more false and pretending as we live the lie we present. MN Nice is a great example of this. We don’t want to create waves so we are nice
and go along but then angry about it underneath and we become passive
aggressive as we blame the other person for this. We fail to take responsibility for ourselves.
Trevor Hudson notes that that the
more we are who we were uniquely created to be, the more we glorify God. As we allow God to fulfill our purpose in our
lives, we glorify Him as “we show up in the world as God intends.” [1] To stand in this place, we need to trustingly
seek and invite God into everything, including the messes.
Blaming, manipulating, controlling
and pretending are all of the flesh and lack the Spirit. They constrain us and steal our freedom
rather than make us freer to trust and become.
My first pastor noted that Enoch had let go of all his own desires and
became totally lost in God. She wrote,
“The leader that trust God, with complete surrender of his own will, will walk
with God and please God.” [2]
We need to live out of this place
of being our authentic self. Bill
Johnson notes that freedom is first an inward experience where we work through
and let go of our sin, regret, resentment, shame, guilt, anxiety, comparison,
blame and other negative aspects of our old life as we become peace. [3]
“May God himself, the God of
peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body
be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you
is faithful, and he will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24)
“The best way to glorify God is by maturing into our unique
selves.” Hudson writes that as we fulfill the destiny God has for us, we learn
the exclusive name by which God calls us.[4] Can we just think about this for a
moment: What is the unique name that God
gave you and how do you live it out? Our
lives, like our fingerprints, are to reflect the unique calling He has placed
upon us.
Trevor writes, “One of the biggest obstacles [to being
Spirit led] is our tendency to regard what we do as more important than who we
become. We make our lives about what we
produce rather than what we become. The
powerful work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is transforming us into the
person God wants us to be. [5]
When we live in the fullness of who we are created to be,
whatever we do, we prosper (Psalm 1:3). As
Bill Johnson notes, prosperity has to do with flourishing. It is a place where our soul prospers and do
does everything we put our hands and hearts into.[6]
Trevor notes that to flower and flourish into all God has
for us does not happen alone; it happens
only in the care of community. It is as
we do life together that we become more what we are [7]. We
need to trust others and invite them into our lives. While people are imperfect, we need to trust
the Great Orchestrator has our back and let go of our fears of falling. Blossoming into who God wants us to be is a trust
fall that happens when we invite others to walk with us through the brokenness
and out the other side.
Trevor asks, “So how do we allow the Spirit to flow more
fully into our hidden depths?” By
allowing the Spirit to flow more fully, we become who we are created to
be. Trevor notes that we open our
hearts and minds to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit as we learn how to
contemplate the glory of God. He writes,
“Simply put, contemplation is learning to live transparently, simply, and
lovingly before God and those around us.
It pays attention to what is most real within and around us.”[8]
Trevor provides three practices to becoming more fully and
uniquely you. First, he writes that we
need to notice and celebrate our own uniqueness. Let’s find joy in how God uniquely designed
us. Second, notice our tendency to
pretend to avoid judgement of others, fit in, or out of envy of other’s gifts
or favor. Third, he notes to listen to the “sound of the genuine” within? [9] Where do we hear God calling our unique name? How do we spell it out with our lives?
One way we can listen to this sound within is to pay
attention to what makes us feel alive. We
listen for what brings us more fully alive versus what drains us. It gives us clues to who we are meant to be.
We then ask how we can you give more time to what enlivens us. Trevor notes, “Being fully alive we will not only
fulfill our personal destiny but also find deeper communion with those around
us.” [10]
Lord, let what spills out of us in
this season be what brings life to others around us. Let us be filled to overflowing with Your
Spirit. Let us find who You uniquely
called us to be and fully live it out for Your glory.
1, 4-10. Hudson,
Trevor. 2024. In Search of God’s Will. NavPress.
2. Johnson, Bill. When Waters Stir.
1. 3. Seivers, Sue. The Leadership Manual. Knowing God Ministries, Minneapolis, MN. 2003.
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