The Praise That Isn’t Yours to Keep

Key Text

There is another side to this coin. I have asked where the ability comes from in The Zero Man and the Hero God. This one asks the harder question, the daily one: when God has given you the ability to do a thing, and the people praise you for it, what do you do with that praise? Because if we are honest, some of us secretly walk away with God’s glory, and we pocket what was never ours to keep.

Paul saw it in the Corinthians, and he asks them three questions in a single breath. Who made you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you did not?

The word Paul uses for receive is the Greek lambano, to take, to receive. And the picture I hold with it is a hand taking what somebody else put in it, and that picture is mine. Your gift, your mind, your voice, your very breath, every one of those was placed in an open hand before that hand was ever full. Paul asks it as a question and does not stop to make a list, so the list is mine. And there is the boast-word again, kauchaomai, to boast or to glory, which I opened in that same study. And the King James gives it here as glory, why dost thou glory. Paul has the two of them in one verse. You received it, so why do you glory over it?

And here is what I have found about that trap. I do not think a person feels the pull of it until they actually have something worth praising. The praise comes, and it feels good, and something in us quietly keeps it.

I know that pull, and I know what it took to be free of it. Long ago I would have frowned and kept frowning. But I have become too old and wise to hold that up against God. I sit in a church service and most times everything goes over my head, and just when I say enough, something comes and overloads me. What I understood Him to be saying is that He did not send me there to receive a blessing but to be a blessing. I hold that as my own testimony and not as a doctrine I can hand you.

And here is what I do with it, and it is my way and not a rule Paul lays down. It is not frowning, and it is not refusing the praise either. The younger heart defends itself, and the humbled heart simply passes the praise through. You receive it with an open hand, the same open hand that received the gift. You do not clutch it, and you do not swat it away, you let it move through you to God.

Now John the Baptist said that about his own ministry giving way to Christ, and his disciples had just come complaining that all men were going to Jesus. So he is not answering a question about compliments. But I take his posture and I bring it here, and the bringing is mine. Not that you become nothing, but that you become see-through, so that when the brethren look at your life they are not stopped at you, they are carried past you to God. A person who has stopped collecting praise for herself becomes a clear window, and the power of God can be seen operating right through the glass.

Reflection

Ask yourself this. When the praise came last, where did it go? Did it pass through, or did it stick?

• When someone praises me, do I quietly keep it, or do I pass it up to God?
• Am I still defending myself the old way, or have I learned to let praise move through me?
• Did I come here today to receive a blessing, or to be one?

And do not hear me abolishing praise, because Paul does not. Read verse 5 again, then shall every man have praise of God. The trouble was never that somebody praised me. The trouble is glorying as though I did not receive the thing they praised.

Prayer

Father, what You have given me I received from Your hand. When the praise comes, keep my hands open, so it passes through me and never sticks to me. Make me see-through, that the brethren would look at my life and be carried straight to You. Send me not only to receive a blessing, but to be one. May my only boast be in the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.