To Be Gladly Spent For Your Soul

"I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls" - 2 Cor 12:15

I've come to the conclusion that as God presses ever harder on my heart and mind that I have more questions and less answers. Or maybe its just that the answers are harder to hear and require more of me than my sinful nature is willing to release.

Take this passage from 2 Cor 12. In a chapter that is known for the third heaven and the thorn in the flesh and Christ's grace being sufficient is tucked this fragment of a verse that God has used to lay out to me both an example and a challenge. But there in lie the questions: What does it mean to spend? Money? Time? Service? Reputation? Life itself? An even deeper question is: What does it mean to be spent? Are our lives now the commodity? How do we get to this point? And what about our heart's attitude? How can I spend and be spent for someone else and be glad about it? This defies human nature. And the list goes on.

At this point I'm not going to post any of the answers that the Holy Spirit is stirring in my soul. The primary reason is that these answers are still vaporous to me. I am a work in progress; a jar of clay that is still on the pottery wheel. But a secondary and equally important reason is that I am becoming more and more convinced that quick answers, especially cleanly packaged ones only help us put God and our Christian walk in a box. We need to press hard into God and we need to let the Word read us (thanks to Matt Chandler for that phrase).

The conclusion? I want to imitate Paul as he imitated Christ (1 Cor 11:1). And didn't Christ spend and wasn't he spent for our souls? (Mk 10:45, among others) What that means and how that looks in my life (and your life) remains to be seen.

To God Alone be the Glory