a trophy life

Chambers is my AM friend. Here's what we talked about this morning.

It is a trap to presume that God wants to make us perfect specimens of what He can do— God’s purpose is to make us one with Himself. The emphasis of holiness movements tends to be that God is producing specimens of holiness to put in His museum. If you accept this concept of personal holiness, your life’s determined purpose will not be for God, but for what you call the evidence of God in your life.

Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship with God that shows itself to be true even amid the seemingly unimportant aspects of human life. When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that hits you is the pointlessness of the things you have to do. The next thought that strikes you is that other people seem to be living perfectly consistent lives. Such lives may leave you with the idea that God is unnecessary— that through your own human effort and devotion you can attain God’s standard for your life. In a fallen world this can never be done. I am called to live in such a perfect relationship with God that my life produces a yearning for God in the lives of others, not admiration for myself. Thoughts about myself hinder my usefulness to God. God’s purpose is not to perfect me to make me a trophy in His showcase...

Even godliness, ironically, can become a means of trying to gain the world and its approval. 

The very first sin in the garden of Eden was a desire to be more like God by worldly wisdom: to be "like" God, but not "with" Him, to be "as" God "instead" of God.

We often want to be like God so we can have what is His: this world.

The promise of Christianity is that you can have God Himself after the world is gone away.

You can have admiration in this life.

But you will lose it and everything else forever if that's all to which you aim.

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." ~ C. S. Lewis