Keeping the right focus for our praise
Throughout history, God has tasked His followers with sharing his love and deeds with others. The early disciples shared how Jesus died on the cross so they could be forgiven for their sins, and now 21st-Century Christians share the same message. They add further examples of God’s love and grace more than 2,000 years on, yet God’s method of spreading His message is the still the same. He uses ordinary people like you and me to communicate with people to ensure that they can get to know the only one who can provide them with a true and meaningful life – the one person it would literally kill us to live without.
But, while God’s chooses to use human beings to bring His good news to others and this enables people to hear the message in ways they can relate to, human nature means it brings with it an inherent danger, because human beings can misplace their hope and trust.
As far back as the early church, people who heard the message of God’s love and salvation from the early Christians could be seen putting their trust and hope in the men who brought the message, and not in God himself. Acts chapter 14 tells how the crowds who had witnessed the healing of a lame man began to worship Paul and Barnabas, the men through whom God’s hearing power had been demonstrated. And, despite their protestations and explanations that they were simply fellow human beings and it was God who deserved the worship, the crowd continued to offer sacrifices to the two men.
More than 2,000 years later, the ritual sacrifices may have gone but the situation is not as different as some might at first think. So often we can see people put their hope and trust in church leaders rather than the one about whom they preach. We see people relying on humans to provide them with answers they seek, rather than going directly to the only true source of answers and resolutions to life’s ultimate questions and problems.
And there are times when we see people coming close to worshiping celebrity Christians – well-known preachers or evangelists who can become so well known for what they do and so admired for it, that people’s focus begins to rest on them, not in the everlasting, open arms of God.
Going back to basics, whether a person helps one person come to know God or helps 10,000, the simple fact is that they have been tasked by God to do His work in helping to lead these people to know Him. Nobody can lead a person to Christ without Christ being at the centre of the work. (or without God directly speaking into that person’s life).Yes, those who do that work – whether as part of a formal church role or simply through living their everyday lives – should be thanked for their obedience to God’s call on them. But ultimately the key thing to remember is that it’s God who deserves the praise, not man.
As Paul and Barnabas highlighted in Acts 14:15, God “made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” He made all people and He alone provided the skills to those who would go on to lead others to Him. He alone deserves the praise, the glory and the thanks and, most importantly, the focus of our hearts and minds.
Sarah Moore is the author of For the Love of Lentil, A journey of longing, loss and abundant grace, which tells the story of her experience of pregnancy and miscarriage. Copies of the book are available here.