God does a good job with his children. He gives us His Spirit, and His holy Spirit changes us and teaches us to be like Him – friendly, honest, generous, and kind, and to be that way even when life gets hard. When we follow after the Spirit and are made that way, we not only please God, but also people: “The kingdom of God is … righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Spirit, and he who serves Christ in these things is acceptable to God and approved by men” (Rom. 14:17–18). In return for having His sweet, humble Spirit within us to mold us and guide us through this life, all that God asks is that we be faithful witnesses for His Son. The temptation we all face is to take God’s gift and win friends with it, but then try to keep those friends by not giving Jesus the credit.
When I was in college, a friend of mine whom we called “Shag” told me about a sweet woman in her small hometown whose husband treated her like dirt. Everybody in town knew about it and felt sorry for the poor soul. But that woman endured for so long and with such grace the public abuse and infidelity of her wretched husband that Shag just had to approach her in a store one day to ask her what her secret was. How was she able to keep doing good and remain at peace in spite of her horrible situation? “Then she ruined it,” Shag said to me. “She started talking about Jesus!”
By her kindness and sweet attitude, which her heavenly Father had taught her, that abused child of God had earned the right to testify about what Jesus had done. Shag was indignant about it, but she had asked that woman to tell her how she was able to be the kind of person she was. And that woman, no doubt long since gone to be with the Lord now, gave all the credit for her strength and good spirit to the One who had given it to her.
That’s all God asks us to do: let His Son make us good, and then, when we have won the respect of people around us because of His work in our lives, give His Son the credit for it that he deserves.
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