"WHO IS THAT AWFUL WOMAN???"

(Please note P.S. at the end.)

Years ago, I had the fun job of narrating for the Atlanta Symphony's Tiny Tots Concerts. I didn't know it, but it was against regulations to tape anything they did. At one of the early rehearsals as I was getting out my tape recorder to have something to rehearse with at home, the conductor asked, "What are you doing?" Well, after his brief explanation, needless to say, I put away my recorder!
But my husband didn't know that.
Later, unbeknownst to me before one of our actual performances, he put another wonderful little recorder in an empty seat w-a- a-a-y in the back, in the dark, and no one knew it was there. We were performing "Peter and the Wolf" right before Thanksgiving, and he secretly kept his recorded little gem and saved it to surprise me Christmas morning when he gave me a new sound system.

All that to say this: when he turned on the performance Christmas morning, I heard my voice and thought to myself, "Who is that awful woman he's put on there???" All of a sudden, I recognized the script and realized it was ME. it was MY "awful" voice! And this was BEFORE we moved to South Georgia and FINISHED off my diction!!! Anyway, the point is that we can't see ourselves; we can't hear ourselves; we don't know what we look like or what we sound like all too often. That's why there's safety in a MULTITUDE of counselors who sharpen us. ( Pv 11:14: Pv 27:17)

Many of us Christians gather "Yes Men" around us, so that we don't have to hear the truths that would make us more Christ like. Granted that the Holy Ghost teaches us, but God has set a failsafe mechanism in the Body, an undefeatable safety net to keep us from falling and to help us see ourselves as we really are;

that mechanism is fellowship in three forms:

# 1. those who feed you;

# 2. those who are on the same level as you are, and

# 3. those whom you feed.

Sad to say but too many of us AVOID the first provision and try to get help and affirmation of our own cooked up plans from level two and even from level three! Surely, all three are friends, but they serve vastly different functions in your life, as you do in theirs. I've had someone say that so-and-so was a good sounding board, when that person was so out of fellowship with God and the Body that it would have been a stretch to think God would use them to speak a Truth that would adjust a wrong-taken path in the other person's life.

It has never been hard for me to recognize the ones God lovingly set in my life to help bring me along, to equip me and impart God's Truths to me. I never resented nor resisted the seasons of drinking God's wisdom from the breast of man, as it were, because I could plainly see that God was blessing us with provision too valuable to calculate! OK, maybe I dreaded it sometimes when I had my own agenda all planned out, but I WOULD do it! Sadly, this provision is difficult for many to grasp or want to take advantage of. Really, willful blindness in this area is a hideous robber.

If you open your eyes, you'll see Christians in your path who "know God better than you d�." Take advantage of their wisdom and don't resist or hang back, even if you don't like them. God has set these in your life to bring you along faster and more accurately than if you choose your own fellowship group or counselors, as Solomon's son so disastrously did.

Remember, we don't know what we sound like or look like, or what we need. At certain stages in our lives, we really need that Mother or Father in the Lord, or that wise counselor who can in an instant -with one sentence even - cut through the morass of self doubt or self direction and cut to the heart of a matter we'd rather conceal. What a tragedy when we, fearful of hearing a painful truth, shy away and miss the help God means and wants us to have! If we could see or hear our "awfulness" by ourselves, we wouldn't need the Body, but God has set it up so that every joint supplies, and walking ahead of us in the Lord is a very important JOINT, fit to supply us with what we need.

Is there some saint in your life that you've kept at arm's length and not really known or understood why you haven't pressed in to them? Well, don't be afraid to embrace the unpleasant in order to rise above the fetters that bind you! Don't stay away because you dread a hard word. Don't refuse to go back to them because you've not followed what they told you before that you knew was from the heart of God. Don't deny yourself this wonderful provision sent to you by your loving Father! Besides, you won't die; you'll LIVE.. and by your humility will have become authorized to equip many # 3's that you are bringing along behind you!

P.S. This is an equipping word that you may not need,
but it may help your # 3's!
I'd be delighted if you passed this along.

Happy New Year!
Diana Smith Highsmith
 

 
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