Day 172: Being Critical

Mark 14:1-31; 1 Kings 8; Hosea 9:17-10:15

The woman pours expensive perfume on Jesus' head, and people criticized her for it. She was honoring and worshiping The Lord, and yet people judged and looked down on her for it. Today, people are going to judge us for the decisions we make. We will receive criticism for how we honor or serve The Lord. Part of me feels like if we haven't, then we haven't been serving The Lord long enough, radically enough, or sacrificially. What's even worse, is that these weren't just people off the streets criticising her, but followers of Jesus, other believers. It's sad that so often those with cutting words and biting remarks are other Christians; I know that I'm guilty of being critical of other believers' actions or choices. Jesus teaches that whatever we do to honor him is a beautiful thing, and should be more important than anything else.

Peter is a great character: he is bold, vocal, opinionated. But Jesus points out that even he is human and can be fearful, insecure, and unfaithful. But, that should give us hope, because God chose Peter and his faith to build his church upon. It was this imperfect human that God's power worked through to do amazing things. The same is true for us. If we think we are just little specks on this earth without a purpose, think again. God can and will use each of us if we let him. That's what is so awesome about God. Because he is so amazing and perfect, he can make wonderful things out of us fearful, insecure, and unfaithful people.

Solomon's prayer acknowledges that God is bigger and greater than to actually live in the temple built by human hands. Throughout his prayer he says "your home in heaven," I think as a reminder to  himself and the people that they cannot contain God in this temple. Solomon's prayer also acknowledges that people are going to sin and turn away from The Lord, but he prays that God would not abandon them in these times, but would continue to care for them so that they could turn back.  

In Hosea, he says that the people were like a grape vine who started to produce a lot of grapes, so they started to think highly of themselves and started to build more altars, then when they realized how awesome those were, they began to set up shrines for other gods. I think about myself when I'm in prosperity: do I turn and humble myself and give glory to God for the goodness in my life? or do I begin to worship my own skills and abilities? When we trust in our own power and think that it is us who makes us successful, God does not get the glory he deserve and he gets angry. When things start to go well for us, we need to be conscious of how much we are focusing on him for our provisions and how much we are focusing on ourselves. We need God in both prosperity and hardship. He deserves praise and worship in both success and failure.