In Romania, the wife of Richard Wurmbrandt was sentenced to hard labor at quarry. After being persecuted for her Christian faith for years, and kept from all family, she was allowed to see her son and speak only three words. What does a mother in that situation say? Most people would think “I love you,” is the most likely contender, with the second likely choice being “Pray For Me.” No, the words she said was “Love Only Jesus.” Of all the words this mother could have said, these three words: Love Only Jesus. Profound, yes, but true? Absolutely! She echoed the very words of the Apostle Paul, “I Count all things lost but knowing Jesus, I discard everything that I may gain Christ.” (Phillipians 3:9). Love Only Jesus. These were not Mrs. Wurmbradt’s words, but the Holy Spirit speaking through her.
In this life everyone will fail you. Your pastor, favorite Christian band, best friend, spouse and all things but Jesus will disappoint you. There was a moment in Our Savior’s life where He beheld mankind and saw it for what it was, “But Jesus didn't trust them, because he knew human nature and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:25-25). What was it Jesus our Lord and God Incarnate saw? Sin? Yes, but also the weakness. He spoke of the weakness to His disicples in Gethesname, “stay alert and pray, for the Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41). The flesh is that old nature on all of us that wants to rebel and do its own thing instead of the God Ordained thing. A man once said, “the angels must obey God, and the demons must obey the devil, but the flesh obeys no one.” The Apostle Paul even tells us, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do..” (Galatians 5:17). So are we to feel hopeless? Can not the flesh perish? It has already when you put your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. However, each moment and day you decide which prevails over your life that day, the spirit or the flesh. You can feed the flesh or spirit. But the way to feed the spirit is to fix yours eyes Jesus and count all lost but Him.
Love Only Jesus. We think we can avoid this truth, and that another fallible human being can never fail us and yet even though madly in love you may discover they cheat and break your trust or your beloved band or actor chooses to feed the flesh instead of the spirit and so publically falls. People will disappoint you, but the God Man Jesus cannot because though He was tempted He never sinned (Hebrews 4:15) and He is the same loving and true and steadfast and Holy God always, “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today forever.” (Hebrews 8:13).
To quote Oswald Chambers, Christ is our beginning and our end;
In our natural life our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him— “…till we all come…to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian life should be. The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord.
In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him. Nothing ever diverted our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in others where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned our Lord even the slightest degree away from His purpose to go “up to Jerusalem.”
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happened to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our “Jerusalem.” There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going “up to [our] Jerusalem.”
“…there they crucified Him…” (Luke 23:33). That is what happened when our Lord reached Jerusalem, and that event is the doorway to our salvation. The saints, however, do not end in crucifixion; by the Lord’s grace they end in glory. In the meantime our watchword should be summed up by each of us saying, “I too go ‘up to Jerusalem.’ ”
From My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers
is
Comments
Post a Comment