Forgetting yourself into immortality

Poatina Morning tea devotion given Monday

Chatting with Michael this morning about the differences in how people are wired. My wife even sees dirt and untidiness differently from how I do. It takes me about 3 sweeps to tidy my desk so she considers it tidy. Today finishing Ephesians 4 – it’s taken a long time!

Rita told her story last week in morning tea and it was lovely. I first met her in Smithton at a meeting. She said in her devotion, “Poatina was a safe place for me but I now need to make it a safe place for others”. Paul makes that distinction when he says in V. 28 –

Did you used to make ends meet by stealing?

– i.e. by taking what you need to live from other people? Well,

no more, get an honest job so you can help others who can’t work.

We talk about social capital. It is what happens between us; there are those who build and those who take.

When you’re a kid it’s ok to take, you need to be cared for. And if you’ve had challenges, you need to take. But if we’re all takers, we are in trouble. Over last year or so we have had less available to give. It’s a challenge because this is a community that was designed to give. I found a bunch of quotes from Martin Luther King and my favourite is,

“10,000 fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality”.

At the end of this Chapter, Paul says 3 things all about getting your eyes off yourself.

1. Are you going to be a taker or are you going to be a giver?

2. “Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth, say only what helps, each word a gift”. I don’t know how you go. Often my speech is generated by my feelings and I want to let the feelings out. But it’s not always helpful: I need to find ways of filtering my talk. So Paul is saying, You’re responsible for your mouth, so be conscious of your words.

3. He then changes focus and says, “Don’t grieve God, don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.” He throws that in amongst the other practical things.

Rosa got me onto podcasts called “The God Journey”. They’re a little challenging. I quite enjoy them. I’ll often listen to them while I’m shaving or in the bathroom. What do you need to complete you? If you say to another person, “You complete me”, that’s actually dangerous; it is co-dependence.

What do you need in order to be complete? If what Paul is saying is true it is his Holy Spirit moving and breathing in you, in the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself that completes you. He says, “Don’t take such a gift for granted”. It this is true, and that God is in us, then it actually sets us up to have healthy relationships with others.

One of the quickest ways to damage a marriage is to be telling your spouse that they need to meet your needs, rather than focussing on how to love them. One thing I remember the counsellor saying when Leeanne and I did our pre-marriage counselling was, “Marriage isn’t a 50:50 deal, it is 100:100 deal”. You need to keep facing the stuff that would hold you back from that. The only way you can really give to others is if you know God is giving to you.

At the end of Eph 4, Paul says,

“Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit. Just remember what you’ve got. Just remember he’s in your life and he’s holding on to you.”

He finishes the chapter,

“Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you”.

Martin Luther King says:

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Even if someone has done stuff to you that is horrific, the only way to personal freedom is to get to a place where you can forgive. Otherwise they hold power over you. It’s not a light thing to say. Paul ends this whole chapter about life in the church by saying you’re going to have to do the work to forgive each other…forgive each other quickly as God in Christ forgave you…

One thing I have realised because of my marriage is just how different people are, and living in a community puts that in your face.

I’ve been really enjoying and have been fascinated by an online quiz called “Leading from your Strengths”. You fill out a questionnaire and I’m not sure how it does it but it comes back with a report of your strengths and weaknesses, generated from the quiz by computer! What’s been helpful for me in it is realising that response most people have when they read their report is, “Oh, I don’t really want those to be my strengths”. Often the strengths are also the things that annoy people about you. But it says we are different and have different strengths.

We need each other because we are profoundly different. We process in profoundly different ways. The world I live in is not the same world you live in. So you act differently. And it’s not easy.

At the end of this Chapter Paul is reflecting on the implications of all he said and he says, “It’s not going to be easy, you’re going to have to work at this.

Martin Luther King says:

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love

It doesn’t mean that when you get out of bed in the morning you want to serve. Putting your own needs aside to serve is never an easy thing.

You could easily burn out in Poatina because there are so many needs and if you don’t know where the line is, that’s not healthy either. But there is something about putting my needs aside that helps me grow up.

Jesus says five times, in different ways: “If you forget yourself you find yourself”

I want to finish again with Martin Luther King:

Ten thousands fools proclaim themselves into obscurity while one wise man forgets himself into greatness.