Todays Thought~ Surrendering all to Christ. Today’s Message is from Mark 10:17-31 In today’s message, a man has come up to Jesus and asks what he must do to have eternal life. Most of us today would simply state one need only to repent of our sins and honestly and humbly accept Christ for who He is and acknowledge Him as our Lord and Savior. While that is indeed true, in this passage Jesus states that we also must go one step further. The step that Jesus is calling us to is to fully place our lives into His care, not holding onto anything in this world that can separate us from fully giving ourselves over to Christ. In today’s passage this rich young man was unable to give up his wealth and his focus upon it. This passage also echo’s much of the Old Testament book of Joshua. (In fact, almost everything that Jesus taught on has a direct Old Testament correlation.) In Joshua, God calls for the people of Israel to destroy the technology of those they encounter, i.e. the chariots. When they do this they win the battles, when they fail to obey, they suffered defeat. It is to this that Jesus is calling us to today. He wants our primary focus to be on Him and what He has taught us to obey. When we take that focus off of him, we become like the Apostle Peter when he took his focus off of Jesus. In other words when we take our focus off of Christ, we let the world overwhelm us and we begin to sink into its darkness and away from Christ. In this passage today the main issue was wealth and possessions. However, today that list can be expanded. Our careers, families, politics, image, fame, entertainment favorites, etc. can and often in today’s world replace or surpass Christ as the central ideal that we go by and try to achieve. All throughout his ministry Jesus kept saying, let he who has ears, hear, and he who has eyes see. This is but another example. This is echoed again in Luke’s Gospel when in 11:28 he states “more blessed is He who hears the Word of God and obeys.” That is the heart of the matter; obeying God fully. When we hold on to our past lives and the trappings of it, we lose our focus on Christ and he no longer becomes what we have sitting on the throne. Therefore as you go to prayer and a time of reflection today, ask yourself honestly if there is something in your life that is preventing you from having that full, uninterrupted connection with Christ. If there is then please take the time to ask God in prayer how to remove that block so that you don’t risk becoming like the young man in this story told by Christ.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 11:45:52 +0000
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