Humility and Gifts (part III)

By Odon Bulamba (summary only - 04 May, 2007)

One day when Jesus was walking one day, with his disciples and they found that blind person, and people asked him, “why is the man blind?”. Jesus answered, “Because God wanted his glory to be manifested through this man.” It was just God's will to make this man blind from the day he was born until the day that he met Jesus Christ.

Maybe you also, maybe me, maybe Jesus created us and put something in our lives from the day we were born until now. Maybe God has put gifts in you, maybe you have the gift of healing, in order to show others His glory.

When Jesus met the blind man, He spat in the ground and made clay. Imagine if you were taken to hospital and the doctor spat. How will you feel? I will be shocked. It's not too easy. Imagine you are coming with someone who is crossing a hard situation and the person spits, maybe you will complain and report to others and tell them, “look at the way he humiliated me”.

After doing that Jesus took the clay, and you put it on the eyes of that man and he told him to go and find some water. Imagine telling a blind person after putting clay in his eyes (no chance to see while he is blind AND he has clay in his eyes) “go now, walk and find some water somewhere”. How hard would that be?

Imagine you go to God to find who you are and to discover the power of God and He tells you, "I have to put something in your eyes.” And then says, “Go now and find some water”. You don't know the way so how will you reach the correct place? God is telling you to go to a place you have never seen. This is how God acts most of the time. He will anoint you and tell you to move and it’s up to you to make the first step and then the second step and then the third until you reach the place where He sent you. Once you are there, you will discover your gifts and the power of God acting in you and you will discrover miracles will be performed through you.

But if God touches you and you think, I don't see any change, what I was expecting is not what I am facing now, you will find it is impossible to move on and your faith will start to die. Your faith will start to come down lower and lower and lower and then Jesus will tell you, “but I told you, just to make that move from here to there, why didn't you do it? Do you just want me to push you?” And that is the problem, because when God pushes, His way of pushing is not like ours. He gives you a chance first just to do it by yourself.

I’m not quite sure what that blind person did maybe he asked someone to take him. Maybe he shouted for help and he needed someone to take him there. Maybe because there was a large crowd, and everybody was following Jesus, he was supposed to find his own way. Don’t expect someone to be next to you to pray for your gift, to pray for the work that you will do for God, you will become irresponsible, you have to look after your gift properly, you have look after it yourself and use your time properly pray to for it.

After the man was healed, some people doubted and wondered if this was the same man that had been blind. Some people believed it was just someone who looked like the blind man. When God uses you for His glory, don’t expect people to always believe you or accept you. You will have people there who will criticize you and God allows this to see how humble you are and to see if you will be able to control yourself. He wants to see if you will react, or if you will become disappointed or if you will avenge yourself.

SUMMARY

- Situations are there for God to be glorified (not for us to judge or to take glory)
- God expects us to be responsible for our gifts (pray for them & use them)
- When you are criticized, it's just a test so respond as a Christian

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