A More Excellent Way

Thanks for putting up with my slogging blogging of excellence. Last night I read these verses in Philippians 1:9-11. I read in several versions and the word best or excellence came up over and over. 9 And this is my prayer: I pray that your love will grow more and more. I pray that you will have better understanding and be wise in all things. 10 I pray that you will know what is the very best. I pray that you will be true and without blame until the day Christ comes again.
11 And I pray that you will be filled with the fruits of right living. These come from Jesus Christ, with honor and thanks to God. Excellence is always going to begin with God's love and walking in God's love. We need to pray for knowledge and understanding and like we studied in Proverbs this spring, GO GET WISDOM!!! With those godly qualities we will know excellence and what is best. We will be filled with the fruits of right living. It all comes from Jesus...and we give thanks to God. We are grateful and full of gratitude to Him whose Name is above every Name named. Gratitude is central to our pilgrimage of the faith. I love this quote by Erwin McManus, "A life of gratitude makes us Whole, overwhelms us with Love and moves us to Live generous lives." That is excellence. I have a co-worker who has excellence, effectiveness and efficiency defined all the same. She see the obvious, but doesn't see the big picture. She is like the disciples with the woman who had an issue of blood. Jesus knew someone had touched Him by faith not by crowd conditions. Peter answered the obvious and what I like to call the Sunday School answer...there are a lot of people Lord, many have touched you. In that scene of the woman and Jairus's daughter they were missing the excellence and desired to be efficient in getting the Lord to the house where the little girl was dying.
The poet Maya Angelou teaches a class at Wake Forest University. She devotes the first three weeks to everyone learning each other's names before studying African American Literature and tests the students on their ability to remember their classmates names before they move on. Eventually she will ask, "why do you think I took 20% of class time to know each other's names?" "Because your name is a sign of your dignity and when you recognize others by name it's not just as a human but as a person. One of the greatest ways to bestow dignity to a person is to call them by their name." Moses asked the name of the voice in the burning bush. God answered I AM. He is the God in the happenings, God is on the move, His presence known and alive and transforming. God, I AM, transformed Moses and the same powerful presence of God is transforming me. He, I AM, I AM doing, I AM here, I AM. God is not just a spectator in our lives, but He is moving. So, I have written all of this to say excellence... I'm still slogging through what it means for my life. When I walk in the excellencies of love then the overflow will come into my work life and my at home life. It will come in my marriage and it will come in my friendships. Excellence will be there when I love my enemies, when I rejoice with those rejoicing and weeping with those who weep. So, this is where I find myself tonight in the excellencies of God's never failing love. He is pruning me with His love.