Receptivity: The Key to True Humanity
I believe in being thoroughly irreverent with God! That’s putting it in extreme form, but what I mean is that a great deal of our pious talk and reverent attitudes and language is a cloak for insincerity. Men of God, God’s familiars, God’s friends, talk back and forth with Him in plain
language.
But Moses, like every one of us, had to learn that you don’t do God’s work by self-effort and self-wisdom. Forty years later, Moses saw what he had not been ready to see before. He saw a queer object near where he was tending sheep in the wilderness. It was a common bush on fire. But the curious thing, as he watched it, was that it didn’t go out. That is where God showed Moses what humanity is meant to be: a common bush aflame with God. But a man must be common first. Moses, in his own opinion, had been a very uncommon royal bush, and God doesn’t live in uncommon royal bushes. Then Moses saw this sight: God’s presence, God’s word out of a common bush-and as the divine consumes the bush, it refuels it. “The bush was not consumed.” That’s exactly what God does. The divine life keeps flowing in, as you give it out. That is receptivity: the key to true humanity. Then you move out into activity.
No one can be active like a Christian—because the believer is motivated by the divine resources, the divine power, the divine Person. We’ve got to learn by our hard knocks to clear out of the way and recognize Another functioning-get His voice, His plans, His resources. Then we come back into the situation as servant, not boss. Once you have come to understand that your basic function is a constant recognition of Another, the whole of life is transformed. It is no longer a matter of inviting Him to come into your life, because you already have received Him. But it is the recognition of Another. Another is the functioning
one.
Taken from: “The Key to Everything“
