Godly incompetence

Wow this week has slipped by and I have neglected my time of reflection around my blog site. I have had a very interesting week, mostly full of messy relationships, messy lives and messy unclear circumstances where I am not always confident that I say or do the right thing. In fact I had to resign myself several times this week to the fact that God will be my judge some day on the "wisdom" I offered on the disputable matters I have given council on to people this week. There is a part of me that would love for things to work out neat and tidy all the time but then there is a part of me that seems to believe, and even quite strongly, that messy is were the action really is. I read a quote this week that has been rumbling around in my mind and I am beginning to see what the author Mike Yaconelli was writing about. "No one does holy living very well, we all suffer from godly incompetence. However, the church has communicated that competence is one of the fruits of the Spirit. There are so many afraid of entering into the joy of their salvation because they fear the possibility of doing or saying the incompetent thing." As I looked around and as I looked inside, I saw the truth of these words. Spiritual incompetence is like the 8th deadly sin. Mistakes are taken way to seriously and there are those inside the church who believe that their competence is a badge of their maturity. When I would say that the desire to love God and the desire to love others is really the essence of truly living a godly incompetence. I think we get it right far less often than we think we do and we get it wrong far more often that we admit we do. Yet, God is so gracious and merciful, and slow to anger, and forgiving, accepting, loving and kind. Tonight as Cheryl and I sat sipping our coffees after a good hard walk, a man who is well known in the community for his wicked life, came up to us and declared he was three days old in his new found faith. And with that the harshness of the week evaporated and the joy of serving Christ was invigorated. He asked if I would do his fifth step for AA and he wanted to know what to do next. It was like a warm bath of joy flooded my soul to see his new joy in the Lord. And somehow all was made right once again.