I believe God became small in Jesus the Christ (Messiah)
because He loved the world and wanted to free it of its
obsession with "bigger and better, more and more, for
me." He also wanted to free the world of the other side
of that obsession: "smaller and worse, less and less, for
others." Lord knows the greater our obsession with
our own stock and reputation, the less our concern
for that of others.
I am convinced
there is only one way
the Western world in particular can be saved
from this empty, self-centered greatness it is
relentlessly pursuing, only one way we can be
freed from the captive hold it has on us. And
that is to find a different greatness. This is
the greater greatness of God, who becomes
small Himself and offers all of us the same
greatness, the greatness of His humility. The path of
God downward is the path to which He calls us.
We all have been given the gift of humility. We may or
may not have discovered it. This gift is an open door to
getting in touch with who we really are. We can choose to
live in our grasping presumption, and it will lead us to
perpetual dissatisfaction. Or we can choose to live in the
humble joy of who we really are. What the birth of Jesus
inaugurated, what His ministry taught us, and what His
life, death, and resurrection unleashed, is the possibility
of being the humans God created us to be. We discover who
we really are by becoming small, by divesting ourselves
of our illusions about ourselves and by seeing, perhaps for
the first time, our soul, which is the center of who we really
are, the image of Himself that God has implanted in us.
For this, God became small. Because of this, we can
walk away from our pretensions and find a life worth living.
We can be truly human.
Commissioner Philip Needham, whose last appointment before
retirement was as Commander for The Salvation Army's Southern
Territory, lives in Tucker, Georgia.
small Himself and offers all of us the same
s a shocker"
is for people who
are looking for a God worth
believing in, people who long
for intimacy with God and others
and people who are searching
for meaning in the world around
them.
Many of us, if we are
honest, feel empty. Our
drivenness and constant
striving have led us
nowhere. The experience
of God in our real, everyday
lives is not what we sense it
should be, or could be. We
long for a God who meets
us exactly where we are, but
God--if we claim to know or
believe in God--seems remote
and uninvolved.
We are puzzled, unfulfilled, at a loss.
And yet...
What if God is actually closer than
we think, and humbler than we
imagine? This changes everything.
Release Date:
March 2014
Publisher:
Abingdon Press in association
with Crest Books
For more information:
www.abingdonpress.com
or www.SAresources.com
on with
oncern
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e path of
them.
h
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st
no
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G
live
sh
ou
lo
ng
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Go
d--
be
lieve
Phil Needham
When
God
Becomes
Small
17
The War Cry | CHRISTMAS 2013
is for people
When God
Becomes
Small
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