Andy’s Prayer Bulletin

In his book Dying to Preach, Steven Smith reflects on Philippians 2:6.  Speaking of Jesus this verse says:

⁶who, although He (Jesus) existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 

 Imagine that you are visiting a hospital. You cannot find a parking place close to the hospital, so you park way in the back, and now you are lost. You stop another driver in the lot to ask directions, and he kindly says that he will just park beside you and walk with you to where you need to be in the hospital. Now suppose that as you get to the front of the hospital, you find out that this man is actually the chief surgeon of the hospital, and as you near the door, he adds, “Oh, yes, and this is my parking place.” He had a superior advantage because of his status. However, in deference to your needs, he did not take his rightful parking spot but walked with you the whole way. So here is the question: As he was walking with you, did he stop being a doctor? No. Did he have a parking place? Yes. He had all of these things and at any time could have laid hold of those things and used them, but for your sake he just chose not to in that particular moment.  As thin as that metaphor is, [it illustrates] that Christ’s walking among human beings did not mean he was not God. Then why did he not reverse his tiredness or overcome all his physical limitations? It is because if he were to override his humanity, he would not have been fully in the form of a man and therefore could not fully empathize with our weakness or save us by his perfect life. The Incarnation was not just an event at Bethlehem. The Incarnation was the moment-by-moment choice of Christ to lay down his privileges, his rights as God, and to acquiesce to ungrateful sinners every second in order to affect our salvation.

 + Praise God that Jesus laid down His rights for us.

 + Pray that we would look to Jesus as our source of strength to lay down our rights for others.

 + Praise God for the additional people over the past few weeks who made a financial commitment to the building.

Thanks for praying with me,

 Andy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 and is filed under Archives.