1 and 2nd Corinithians

Right now I'm chasing a Bible plan--it's not a bad place to be, keeps me moving.  The pressure can also be a burden however. I feel a step behind continually, like when our springer spaniel sometimes paws my heels as I walk. Really? I will get there, if you'll give me a minute.

I've decided to read The Message version of 1 and 2nd Corinthians to help me keep up the pace and approach it with fresh wording.

Paul's persona is winsome.  He's burdened, yet loving. Earnest, yet withholding to not overwhelm others. Honest, interceding, a champion for Christ and the Church. His personality and heart comes across vividly through these letters--his burden.

Although I'm reading in 2 Corinthians now, the commentary led me back to this verse in 1 Corinthians:

"God's Spirit and God's power did it, which made it clear that your life of faith is a response to God's power, not to some fancy mental or emotional footwork by me or anyone else. " 1 Corinthians 2:4-5

This idea---that God's Spirit and God's power--is behind our lives is liberating, comforting, encouraging. After working on myself over 51 years and watching others work on themselves with seemingly little cumulative progress, to turn my eyes to His ability not my own, lifts the burden time and time again.

Today, I'm reading 2 Corinthians Chapters 1-3.  I love that my AP teaching has gifted me with a more sensitive awareness of the rhetorical situation and elements.  Both books tie together---it's not a laundry list of how God works--which is the way we often approach scriptures, pulling this or that verse out and plugging it into our lives with a sense of accomplishment, though God works through that too.  But, this morning, it delighted me to read with a sense of Paul's person---trying to get to know him--his quirks, his hopes, his fears.  Paul offers them all up freely even though he knows he may be misunderstood.

The other day I off-offhandedly wondered to Briggs, "I wonder if I would like Paul, if I would want to be friends with him if I met him?"  He answered immediately that I would like Paul. Thinking through Paul, Briggs was right.  I guess I was seeing Paul in that moment as a "pusher" and I tend to dislike pushers--someone forcing their agenda on me in an authoritarian way.

But, thinking more on it, Paul has a double agenda always--authentic love and an authentic hope for the best for others. This is different than a "pusher" because God is the heart of it, not Paul's abilities, reputation, or agenda.  I think that's why it's different with Paul---it doesn't all trace back to being seen by man, by his peers, or his community a certain way.  He is zealously outside of that, willing to be emotionally or physically injured in an effort to reach people.  And you sense his realness in that...that he's half outside of himself and outside of his own comfort zone, but pushing on regardless.

So the "pushing," if you will, feels like God's power, God's glow, God's prompting instead of his own.  Oftentimes I get a sense that Paul can't even help himself---he's just in for the ride of the Spirit in his life.

I feel these "authenticity sensors" in my life and with regard to other Christians as well.  Only God can know our heart, our spirit, this is definitely true.  But, I can generally tell when the "glow" of my actions and intent (expressed in the analogy of Moses and the commandments in 2 Corinthians 3) is from Him, from the Spirit, and when it is more from what the Message renders as "the Government of Death," aka legalism (2 Corinthians 3:7).

Paul says that Moses had to hide his face with a veil because the glow was fading.  I feel that way when I am doing a God work or kind thing out of a sense of obligation or mere works.  It's a mix, I admit, but the best part of anything I do is comprised of God's power in my work, never my own.  It all comes from Him in the end anyway--the particular giftings, the ability to express them, the efficacy of them.

Resting in God's power in my life is like resting in a long bubbly bath--just the right temperature, just the right everything. I praise God for His work and His power alongside Paul.