Practical righteousness (simply, righteousness practiced or lived out) isn't about who works most or who works best. It's about who most readily surrenders to the work the Holy Spirit is doing in them. The work is God's responsibility. Surrender is my only responsibility. The Church has divided into sects...each of us marching under our own banners (conservatism, liberalism, denominational, contemporary, traditional.) All the while, the God of Heaven is searching for hearts surrendered and lives selflessly laying down their agendas and, instead, waving a white flag of total surrender to His Spirit.
I cannot imagine what we would see in our communities if believers would:
(1) Live every moment with an awareness of His Presence. He is IN us! He not only heard what they said or saw how they acted, He felt it and instantly began working to heal the hurt it caused you (and them.) Don't nurse the grudge He wants to heal.
(2) Simply cooperate with the work He wants to do in & through us. At the end of the day, the week, the lifetime...we will answer to Jesus for how completely we surrendered. Any rewards we earn will be a result of the work we allowed HIM to do through these temporal bodies. This life is the vapor...the flower that withers...the blip on the radar of eternity. Heaven will be worth every headache and every heartache.
(3) Be patient with the work He is doing in others. What you perceive to be a downfall in someone may actually be a sign of their surrender to something much bigger God is doing under the surface. Paul had a "thorn in the flesh" that many most likely perceived as a shortcoming or fault, but it was, in reality, something God had left as a testimony of His grace in Paul's life...an imperfection used to perfect Paul's faith.
Practically living out this Christian life as vessels surrendered to something (Someone) much bigger than ourselves takes all of the accountability and criticism we have been needlessly & pridefully shouldering and places it all over on Jesus. (He can handle it!) That complete surrender is our only hope of being free of discontentment and discouragement and free to do something supernatural in a natural world.
"For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain." Philippians 2:13-16
