This past Sunday I said the pursuit of “excellence” can present sublet dangers to us. With over ten years of training and ministry experience under my belt, I have come to understand that our perceptions of “excellence” do not always line up with scripture. This past month I read a great article in The Christian Standard entitled “Recovering from Excellence” by Daniel Schantz. Click HERE to read it. His insights along with my long time concern provided the motivation to prepare a teaching on Biblical excellence.
Using Paul’s advice to the Colossians, “What ever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,” (Colossians 3:23), I warned that we shouldn’t assume God wants us to do something just because we worked hard at doing it. Our “excellent” effort may have been for not. Using Martha’s example (Luke 10:38-42), we saw her hard working effort to provide Jesus with an “excellent” visit were misguided. She missed the point of Jesus' visit.
The thrust of my teaching was for hard working Christians to ask themselves the difficult question, “Are my life’s efforts like the Christ focused Mary or like the distracted Martha?” I had to use all my time on Sunday to set up this question, therefore, I did not actually state what it meant to be an “excellent Christian.” That would have made a great three part sermon series but I’ll have to settle on a blog series. I hope you keep reading.
Extra: If you are reading this, chances are, you listened to Sunday’s teaching and/or read about it in the last edition of The Currier (and if you did neither I am glad you are here anyway.) I’m going out on a limb here to assume that you’re not much of a blog reader. That’s alright...I just started. May I recommend something to you? Click on the word “comment” just below this entry and leave a comment of your own. I would love for others to read your insights. Keep you comments brief and to the point. Feel free to disagree with what I have said...but be nice about it. Thanks.
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