It does not show on the face. Neither does it quickly put food on your table, clothes in your wardrobe or money in your pocket. It does not earn you a quick recognition nor does it win you a quick approval. An excellent spirit, like the “righteousness” that produces it, does not pay quickly, but eventually, it surely does pay! And when it does finally pay, it more than makes up for its seeming sluggishness! Permit me to introduce you to and advertise to you, the nature and manner of life that translates into being a man or woman of an excellent spirit.
For one, an excellent spirit takes time to develop. It takes time to build up and grow. It takes effort, real painstaking determined effort, to build an excellent spirit especially when nothing around encourages you on. All around you, men cut corners and take shortcuts to achieve success. Several colleagues, exerting far less effort, return home quick and jubilant with overnight breakthroughs making the diligent conscientious hardworking labourer, seeking to pass thorough the excellent but narrow path, seem like a mere over-righteous tie waster. That is why most men, including God’s children, find it difficult to wait and build the excellent spirit in their life and character to full blown maturity! Those that will develop an excellent spirit must be willing to give it time. They must be willing to be patient while it forms and grows.
The Excellent spirit is grown in obscurity.
“There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods…” (Dan 5:11 KJV)
The excellent spirit is not a limelight spirit. It is neither grown there nor does it relish the public glare. It needs quiet, it needs focus, it needs concentration for it to form… and those are not conditions you find easily in the limelight. A Daniel was in the kingdom and yet, the king did not know. Such a man of quality and integrity was in the kingdom unknown, unrecognized, uncelebrated. Someone has to belatedly announce to the king, “There is a man in your kingdom.” Despite his divinely endowed gifts, despite his sacrifice and diligent service to the generation of rulers, yet there he was, unrecognized and unrewarded. No one remembered to invite him to the party of the thousand lords”. His name did not make the list of the “top thousand dignitaries”.
“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.” (Dan 5:1 KJV)
Yes, when everything is going on as normal and all seem to be able to handle their problems by their crooked means, no one remembers a Daniel. That’s how the chief butler forgot Joseph in prison for two years until Pharaoh had a dream that no one else can interpret.
When the system is working, aided on by ‘not so excellent’ men, the stage is not yet for the man of an excellent spirit. But when nothing works again and no one around can make it to work, when ordinary men using ordinary methods fail in a extraordinary fashion, only then do men seek and bring to the center-stage, the man in whom an excellent spirit is found.
The excellent spirit is a spirit of the Holy God! There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods… (Dan 5:11 KJV)
The excellent spirit is of the Holy God! It is a stream flowing from holiness of life and righteousness of ways. The excellent spirit comes from ‘right living’ and ‘right doing’. It is build by a habitual life of doing things well. It is doing things, big or small, strategic or inconsequential, publicly or in privacy in the way they should be done. The man of excellent spirit does not just settle for the acceptable or the pardonable; he aims for correctness, for fairness to all even if at higher personal cost. He seeks to do things in the best possible and justifiable way. It is the spirit of holiness! And when you possess it, the advantages are numerous…
In the excellent spirit is found light and illumination!
“And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation of the thing: And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.” (Dan 5:15-16 KJV)
In the excellent spirit is found light and illumination! In it is found direction and guidance, in it is found the dissolving of doubts and clearing of confusion. When a man of an excellent spirit arrives on the scene, he brings in a dimension that is beyond all normal suggestions; a dimension not accessible to men who rose through the ranks cutting corners, by jumping queues and by finding ways around legitimate procedures. In the excellent spirit is insight, foresightand hindsight. In it is ability to see through the darkness that veils the solution.
A fount of practical understanding and well of divine wisdom!
“There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him…” (Dan 5:11 KJV)
In the man of an excellent spirit is a fount and a well. Form him, issue out springs of practical understanding and in him is a well, deep with wisdom. The excellence of spirit stems from both a practical understanding of the situation at hand and from a divine inspiration available only from heaven.
He is equipped for practical insight bu having been previously hard at work in his chosen career. He has learnt the ropes by due diligence. He is conversant with issues by practical experience. He has caught the hang of things by years of silently interacting with his work. And where that stops, begins the flow of divine wisdom. From deep wells inside… the wells of salvation, the wells of communion, the wells of intimate relationship with the HOLY. A man of an excellent spirit is the man that has the spirit of grace and truth speaking forth from deep within him. When he speaks, he speaks not of his own but of the spirit of God. He can see what other men cannot see. He can hear what physical ears cannot hear. He brings divine solutions realms beyond the human brain to bear on physical situations that has defy earthly remedies.
