Some say that most of the time everyone want to be great, because they have a natural desire for acceptance, recognition, and praise. Perhaps this is so.
And in a dark time that means everyone wants to have power. Power becomes the standard of value, the coin of the realm in a fallen world. So they want to be one of the tough guys, one of the formidable wielders of weapons. As if there can be any just weapon that we take up on our own, that is not given to us by the Lord for His purpose. Those who take up the sword for their own purposes will die by it.
If by some chance that person may wish to serve God, then they may wish that they could take up the sword like an avenging angel, and smite those enemies of God, who are people who usually offend them. This is because their idea of what it is to be a human being has been subtly poisoned by their times.
And all too often that becomes those who offend by their mere existence, in a blind hatred of 'the other.' The other will soon enough become the weak, and the different, and the 'do-gooders.' And then they are no longer of God, but given over to the darkness.
And this is a subtle but very effective snare, and a sin against the Spirit. We embrace the world and its values not in our love of it, but in our hatred of it as we see it. And so we grasp the same sword of power, and use it as we will with its intoxication, and are lost. How much money, how much power is enough? The will to power is a pathological sickness, that becomes all consuming and insatiable.
This is not service, or greatness, not in God's economy. This is a willfulness and a destruction of the self that comes from sin, but that in its own insidious way may encompass many of the trapping of religion, the ornaments of ritual, and symbols, and all the showiness, the noise and pomp of human offices, but always and remarkably devoid of God's love. Worldly power is a perversion of heavenly power in that it expresses itself in the ability not to create life, but to destroy it. And it becomes exultant in what it thinks is its power over life, by death.
Be on your guard always, and do not allow yourselves to be among those simple ones who will be taken in during the dark times, as the love of many grows cold. Stand firmly, but humbly, to the end. And you will have your greatness.
"Do you desire to be great? make yourselves little. There is a mysterious connexion between real advancement and self-abasement. If you minister to the humble and despised, if you feed the hungry, tend the sick, succour the distressed; if you bear with the froward, submit to insult, endure ingratitude, render good for evil, you are, as by a divine charm, getting power over the world and rising among the creatures. God has established this law. Thus He does His wonderful works.
His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all. They are busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them. They are apparently set on no great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do: they seem to fail. Nay, even as regards religious objects which they themselves profess to desire, there is no natural and visible connexion {320} between their doings and sufferings and these desirable ends; but there is an unseen connexion in the kingdom of God. They rise by falling...
Let this be the settled view of all who would promote Christ's cause upon earth. If we are true to ourselves, nothing can really thwart us. Our warfare is not with carnal weapons, but with heavenly. The world does not understand what our real power is, and where it lies. And until we put ourselves into its hands of our own act, it can do nothing against us. Till we leave off patience, meekness, purity, resignation, and peace, it can do nothing against that Truth which is our birthright, that Cause which is ours, as it has been the cause of all saints before us.
But let all who would labour for God in a dark time beware of any thing which ruffles, excites, and in any way withdraws them from the love of God and Christ, and simple obedience to Him...
Such is the rule of our warfare We advance by yielding; we rise by falling; we conquer by suffering; we persuade by silence; we become rich by bountifulness ; we inherit the earth through meekness; we gain comfort through mourning; we earn glory by penitence and prayer. Heaven and earth shall sooner fall than this rule be reversed; it is the law of Christ's kingdom, and nothing can reverse it but sin."
John Henry Newman
" ...if I can help somebody as I pass along, If I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's travelling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."
Martin Luther King
