If Jesus pulled in right now, appeared right now, would you run right out to him…or would you be torn? Just imagine, Jesus is outside and waiting to take you away. What would you do? Would you just drop everything and run right out there, or would you be thinking about what you should grab to take with you? What about your stuff, your ‘cloak’, your wife, kids, dogs, cats, whatever? Would there be something inhibiting you from just running right out to Jesus? The question is, if you have those thoughts, are you really prepared for His coming, and if not, are you really fit for service in the kingdom of God? I don’t know the absolute answer to this. It seems to me that wanting to take your kids, wife, husband, ‘could’ be a show of love and how could love be a conflict with God? On the other hand, wanting to go back to get your ipod could point to a real problem.
What constitutes faithfulness...
I guess that's the question for all of us that claim the name of Christ. What must we do, who must we be, to be considered faithful? Jesus said many things that are relevant, but two things stand out for me. First, in John 14:21, Jesus said "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." And then, in John 14:23, Jesus said "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching." If you had to sum up what Jesus's teaching was, my Christian Interpretation would be that it would come down to love (John 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Matthew 22:37-40 Jesus replied: "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." Matthew 7:12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.)
If love is the commandment, how then are we doing? If you took a survey of yourself, and in one column you noted acts of selfless love, how many entries would there be? Are we making the most of every opportunity, or are we a bit like the person James describes (James 1:23-24 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.)? Do we walk out the door and immediately forget who we are, who we want to be? It's so easy to do that, and to be sure, satan doesn't miss an opportunity to attempt to derail the best of intentions.
You know, as I'm sitting here thinking about this blog entry, it just dawned on me that I have a heavy jacket in my closet that I rarely use and could live without. The weather is getting colder here now, and we have many homeless people in this area. Surely one of them could make better use of it.