Toongabbie Anglican Church Blog

Weekly Blurb

What makes a great person?

Sunday 9 June, 2002 · Posted by Neil Atwood

A friend of mine was asked to answer that question in a breakfast talk recently. The great actor Russell Crowe had just missed out on his second Oscar. The great footballer Wayne Carey, had failed his wife, his mates and his club. The great politicians who lead our country were embroiled in the ‘children overboard’ affair.

What makes a truly great person? Where can we look for the answer? Hollywood, Canberra, the Melbourne Cricket Ground?₀ Or the Word of God?

In Isaiah 66, The Lord, our Creator and King says that the one he esteems is the one “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word.” (v2b) Not by doing great things for God (v1b). Certainly not by making great sacrifices to, or for God (v3). But humility and contrition and obedience!

How different to the standards so many of us reach for in our secular world!

A great prayer warrior and author of the early 1900’s, S.D. Gordon, adds these thoughts to the topic: “The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer, nor those who say they believe in prayer, nor yet those who can explain about prayer. I mean those people who take time and pray. They have not ‘extra’ time. It must be taken from something else. This something else may well be important. Very important and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer.”

So never feel that praying is a waste of time, or is the ‘easy’ option because in the work of the gospel, in the building of the Kingdom of God, and in the daily spiritual battles we fight “The real victory… is won beforehand in prayer. Ministry is merely gathering up the results” (S.D. Gordon)

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