Posted on 02/13/2006 5:06:59 PM PST by DallasMike
Brad at Broken Messenger had a really nice article yesterday on how our commitment to an object determines our true love of it. He explains how our commitment to Christ costs us a little bit now but gains us much, much more in the future. As I write this, I think about the single seed that gets planted in the ground now – dying, as it were – but yields a great harvest later. Brad writes:
A relationship with Christ is a full commitment to be sure. His yoke is indeed light and His gifts are bountiful, but His will is for our full submission – a total surrender, a complete yielding and a whole devotion to Him. It is a joyful proposition and transaction to be sure! It is an exchange, that though seems heavy at first, is really the relinquishment of little for much. Peace and Joy both now and forever for the discard of bondage in sorrow, emptiness and vanity; temporal treasures now for imperishable treasures later and to behold the greatest treasure of all: God himself.
Brad goes on to quote some scripture that is comforting to those who have been Christians for awhile, but is often strange-sounding to the secular world and to new Christians. Successful people on earth are those who have everything, not those who have nothing. The world does not reward the meek and the lowly but instead rewards the greedy and the treacherous. Jesus says that the world has it backward:
"Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him." (John 12:25-26
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"But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28
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Stingray: Conservative Christian News and Commentary
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