Grace For The Journey

For more than two thousand years, a question Jesus asked has haunted and hounded the human race . . . Our Lord said in Matthew 16:26, “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”

When you take a really think about this question and consider what it is asking, it turns out to be as comforting as it is challenging.   Never in the history of mankind has this question been more relevant and more demanding of a carefully and prayerfully thought-out response than it is today in the 21^st century.

What good would it do you to gain the whole world

If you were to forfeit your very soul in the process?

This profound question is rooted in a single word: “contentment.”  In our Western society, contentment seems to be as far away from many of us as the east is from the west.  Everyone is seeking contentment, but few find it.  From Madison Avenue to Hollywood, we are bombarded daily with advertising in print, movies, television, and the Internet – messages designed to manipulate us from the inside out, causing us to crave all sorts of stuff we don’t need, buy it with money we don’t have, in order to impress people we don’t even care about.

But this is not what God wants from us!

Our Master’s words stand in stark contrast

To the messages we receive through the media.

Jesus knows exactly what we need

And

What is best for us

In every given set of circumstances.

Can you think of any moment in your life, right up to this moment, when our Lord did not give you exactly what you needed?

Notice I did not say “what you wanted” in the previous sentence, because “needs” and “wants” are not the same thing.  Every one of us gets caught up in the latest fads and trends; we want stuff we don’t need . . .

Which pulls us away

From “the godly life”

In order to chase

After what the world tells us

Is “the good life.”

Yet experience has taught us well that . . .

The only truly good life we will find

On this side of the grave

IS the godly life,

Which is rooted

In a right relationship

With our Lord Jesus Christ.

 It is not sinful to desire some of the “stuff” of life, and our God graciously gives us many of those things.  But . . .

When the desire for stuff dominates our lives,

We are in danger of being drawn away

From the only One who truly matter

In both life and death:

The Lord Jesus Christ.

So let me close with this question: What is the deepest desire of your heart today?  If it is anything other than Jesus, it is too small to pursue and will leave you on the wrong side of the life’s cost-benefit analysis.

This is God’s Word For Today … This Is Grace For The Journey

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

 Pastor Terry

 Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”