We cannot divorce ourselves from service unto You. We cannot have one standard for ourselves, and a different standard for our service. A person may perform beautifully as a preacher, speaker, musician, or teacher, but then live personally on a shoddy basis. What is true of one, must be true of the other.

Our service to God must be unblemished, which means that all sins must be confessed.. We cannot be half-hearted about it. Also it means that we cannot offer someone else=s service and call it ours. If we offered ourselves blemished, and broken, we would never be saved! We cannot offer our service to God on any plane that is lower than when we offered Him our soul for salvation.

Another persons performance impresses us, yet when we look closely at that person, we see broken-ness, and blemish. Do others find the same inconsistency in me?

One thing that is sure is this: God demands CONSISTENCY, and if we or any other disciple come up lacking, we must root out the disparities until both life and service are one.

Are we sufficient for these things? NEVER! But, our sufficiency is God-given, and He has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant(2 Cor. 3: 5-6)

THANK GOD FOR HIS SUFFICIENCY!

FLUBS AND FLAWS

Have you Aflubbed@ up in your spiritual life? Most of our flubs are not sins, but just mistakes, and mistakes are the marks of immaturity and greenness. As an infant we make many mistakes, but parents don=t give up on their children, because they realize they are just infants. They know that they will outgrow their childishness.

When God begins a work in our lives, the result must be His satisfaction. If God was satisfied with His Son on Calvary, and His creation, I=m sure He is satisfied with His work in us as His children. We may not be perfect morally, but it means that, like a potter, He is satisfied with our progress.

Don=t compare yourselves with others. If you do this, you put yourself on the same level. No two children of God are ever at precisely the same level. We just need to ask God if He is satisfied with our progress at a given moment. If He is, all is well, even though flubs, flaws, and specks appear in our makeup.

The basic thing that God looks for in us, is not the absence of flubs and flaws, but the presence of clay that is soft and moldable. God can easily work out the flubs and flaws, but He cannot do a thing with clay that is hard and brittle, and crumbly. Brittleness means that we have been hurt somewhere along the line, and have not gotten over it.

Let=s be the best clay, soft and conformable to His image!