How hard is it for us to say, No? If someone is asking us to get involved in doing something or another activity comes along, how hard is it for us to say, No? Here’s what happens. We get so busy doing so many other things that the priorities in our life get crowded out and usually the first is God.
If God was physically here on Earth and screaming, “Give your time, give Me your money, give Me your talents,” it would be different. I know that doesn’t sound real spiritual; but, we need to learn to say no.
It’s kind of like going to Sams. We’re going to run in for one or two items and we end with a cart full. When my wife and I go out to eat at Mayflower we usually will order just one meal. The plate is huge, plus I am cheap. But when the plate comes we will divide the food and she has her plate and I have mine. Here’s what I don’t do. When the plate comes I don’t eat from the plate until I have eaten all I want and give her what’s left. She may not have a lot left to eat. She knows and I know that I could eat most, if not all that one plate. Well, that’s kind of what a lot of folks do with God. We say, well, let me do this and this and this and then, if there is any time left, I’ll give that to God. And, let me buy this and this, and oh I really need this and if there is any money left, I’ll give it to God.
We are a consumer oriented people and with that way of thinking there’s nothing to give God. And we end up without anything or very little time left to give God. I am not talking about how we can squeeze God into our lives. What we want to say is that we want God to have priority over me, my life and my stuff. Everyone has time to serve God. Every one of us has enough money to give God. Now, do we have enough time and enough money to live the kind of life we want to life and serve God and give to God the way we should? Probably not. So we have a decision to make and usually, not always, but usually God ends up sacrificing so we can please ourselves.
I’m talking about the possibility, and I know it’s a crazy thought to some of us, about the possibility that we come to a point in our lives that we are more concerned about what God wants than what we want. And that is the very core of what it means to be a slave of Christ. That’s what Jesus meant when He said we should take up our cross and follow Him….submitting to His will for our lives instead of crowding Him out of our lives and giving Him a token of our lives.
The lawyer who asked Christ, “…which is the great commandment in the Law”? (Matthew 22:36), was attempting to entrap Christ. The Pharisees, in their tradition, had reduced the Law of Moses to three hundred sixty-five negative commandments and two hundred forty-eight positive commands. Our Master was asked this question: “There is no way we can keep all these laws, which one commandment do we need to keep?” “And He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).
The one thing this lawyer was attempting to accomplish exposed the fallacy of our concept of priorities.
It appears most American christians look through the glasses of American christianity when it comes to priorities. We make the plea, “New Testament christianity,” which is the proper plea, but it appears what most folks mean is American New Testament christianity. If we are going to be the church we read about in the Bible, let’s be that church. Life is all about priorities and the early church was balanced in their priorities (Acts 2:40-47).
One question that I am asked by a lot of people about my favorite verse, and that’s really hard, but one verse that means a lot to me is James 5:17…. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours…” Elijah was a human being just like us. He was not physically superior to us that made him stand out. And the same thing is true of Noah, Moses, David, Paul or Peter. They were people just like you and me. And when we promote them to a superior status we demote ourselves thinking we can never have the kind of faith they had. We need to see that it was faith in God that made them stand out.
Can we have faith in the same God as they did? Absolutely, positively, without a doubt, beyond any question, “YES!” “So then, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17).
Submitted By: Lennie Reagan
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