所以你们或吃或喝,无论作什么,都要为荣耀神而行。(林前十31)
别以为生活上浅显的事,不是出于神;这些事与深奥的事一样,同是出于神。你拒绝肤浅,不是因为你对神的虔诚,而是你想叫人觉得你并不肤浅;这样,正好表现了你属灵的骄傲。要当心自满在你里面带来的东西,它总是沿着这条线出现,并导致你四处指责别人,因为觉得他们比你更肤浅。小心不要假装是一个深刻的人;神也曾成为一个婴孩。
肤浅并不是奸恶的表现,也并不表示没有深度,因海洋也有边岸。生活中表面上的事,如吃喝、走路、谈话,都是神所定的。这些也是主曾有的生活。作为神的儿子,他也这样生活过,他说:“学生不能高过先生。”
我们的保障是在于肤浅的事。我们必须以平常之道过日常平凡的生活。深奥的事来临,神赐予我们这些,并不是让我们有肤浅的担忧。除了向神,我们不必向任何人显露内心的深度。我们往往太过专注于自己的品性,以致不肯在日常平凡生活中,活得像基督徒。要下决心除了神,不把任何人放在心内;这样你会发现第一个要摒弃不管的,就是最会假冒的家伙——你自己。
祈祷◆主啊,愿你今天将圣灵的直觉力和你所有的灵感赐给我,以致我可以在一切事情上辨别你。愿你恩慈的同在和平安充满这一整天。
November 22: Shallow And Profound
“Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31
Beware of allowing yourself to think that the shallow concerns of life are not ordained of God; they are as much of God as the profound. It is not your devotion to God that makes you refuse to be shallow, but your wish to impress other people with the fact that you are not shallow, which is a sure sign that you are a spiritual prig. Be careful of the production of contempt in yourself, it always comes along this line, and causes you to go about as a walking rebuke to other people because they are more shallow than you are. Beware of posing as a profound person; God became a Baby.
To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps: the ocean has a shore. The shallow amenities of life, eating and drinking, walking and talking, are all ordained by God. These are the things in which Our Lord lived. He lived in them as the Son of God, and He said that “the disciple is not above his Master.”
Our safeguard is in the shallow things. We have to live the surface common-sense life in a common-sense way; when the deeper things come, God gives them to us apart from the shallow concerns. Never show the deeps to anyone but God. We are so abominably serious, so desperately interested in our own characters, that we refuse to behave like Christians in the shallow concerns of life.
Determinedly take no one seriously but God, and the first person you find you have to leave severely alone as being the greatest fraud you have ever known, is yourself.