Loving Jesus

Today’s reading is about surrendering all to Jesus. Yesterday’s sermon compared the supremacy of Jesus with trying to keep the Law of God. I say trying because I cannot do it. My efforts and ideas all fall short.

My plans also miss the mark. The past two weeks have been filled with interruptions to my agenda. Today I’m thinking that the interruptions are part of what God wants for me. Many of them were difficult: requests for prayer from a family in trouble, a relative in the hospital and his care-giver burned out, the death of an infant, threats to the well-being of a family member, people asking us to referee their feud with other people, my husband’s back injury still not healed, unexpected tasks added to my to-do list, and the pressure of not getting enough sleep.

All these added to the usual challenges to trust God with everything — yet as I pray and let Him interrupt my plans, there are lovely surprises: calls from loved ones, conversations with Christians young and older that were like tonic to my soul, words of affirmation, understanding and love, and enough energy to get the important chores done. Jesus is a faithful and wise ‘business manager’ for want of a better term, or perhaps ‘personal assistant’ — but more. He is Lord of life. I need to rejoice when He interrupts my schedule for He not only knows more and is wiser than I am, He wants to use me to somehow do what He wants done.

Yesterday a person that has seemed unteachable and stubborn asked me for help in three areas of life. A teen told all in hearing range that I am his favorite senior person. A couple about to move into a new home asked us come and pray for their life in that house before they enter it. In a long chat, a child asked me a dozen questions about life. One of our busy adult children called several times just to talk. We had a marvelous visit with a woman who is nearly 100, no dementia and delighted we came. Normally these would not seem huge, but with the other events, they were like a feast to a starving and very tired person.

Surrendering to Jesus means letting Him control life. I tried to do other things, but nothing happened that was not interrupted by His better plan. Now I see that He was using all this to affirm  that I can trust Him with the control of life’s events.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13–17)

I’ve not boasted about what I will do, but the Word of God makes it clear that even resenting those interruptions would not be right. When the Lord wants something from me, I should gladly say YES.

Today’s reading says: “Be generous in your self-surrender! Meet His measureless devotion to you with a measureless devotion to Him. Be glad and eager to throw yourself unreservedly into His loving arms and to hand over the control of your life to Him. Whatever there is of you, let Him have it all. Give up forever everything that is separate from Him. Consent to resign, from this time forward, all liberty of choice, and glory in the blessed nearness of union…”

PRAY: And Jesus, I say amen. Thank You for the ability to not only see that You are in the interruptions, but that You have more in mind than just teaching me to humbly surrender. You are blessing others too and gladly going along with Your will is my opportunity to love them and love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Thank You.

What about tomorrow?

 

Yesterday’s weather report warned it would rain overnight, and it did. Buses stopped running and newscasts warned “stay off the streets” that shone like mirrors. Today’s devotional word was picked yesterday; it is TOMORROW, an interesting choice as we plan to leave tomorrow on a short vacation. Thankfully, our flight was not today. The airport was closed this morning.

In the OT, a major section in Exodus describes Moses’ plea to Pharaoh to let God’s people go using tomorrow in several warnings to that Egyptian leader. The Lord told Moses to tell Pharaoh that He would send plagues so they would know there is none like Him. He warned, “You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go. Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now” and “If you refuse to let my people go, behold, tomorrow I will bring locusts into your country.” Pharaoh had a day’s notice to make his decisions.

Later, when God’s people had escaped and journeyed through the wilderness, they complained about the food and were told, “Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? For it was better for us in Egypt.’ Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat.” They too were given a day’s notice to change their attitude.

This became a pattern. Warnings and directions came a day ahead, such as, “Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea” and “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you” and “Do not be afraid of them, for tomorrow at this time I will give over all of them, slain, to Israel . . . .”

Even with this encouragement the people still resisted God. Joshua asked if they would also “turn away this day from following the Lord? And if you too rebel against the Lord today then tomorrow he will be angry with the whole congregation of Israel.”

Proverbs 27:1 comes closer to where I am: “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” How true, yet the people of the OT had a tough time learning this. In Isaiah 56:11–12, the prophet described their irresponsible leaders:

“ . . . They are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all. ‘Come,’ they say, ‘let me get wine; let us fill ourselves with strong drink; and tomorrow will be like this day, great beyond measure.’ ”

In the NT, Jesus changed this pattern. Instead of worrying about tomorrow, or making overblown plans thinking we control the future, He made tomorrow a way of trusting God.

Matthew 6:30 and 33-34. “But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? . . .  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Jesus holds the future. When the Pharisees told Jesus to leave because Herod planned to kill Him, He said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.” He wasn’t worried about His future.

James 4:13–17 tells me the attitude I need to have about making plans for tomorrow:

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”

GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. My calendar has our flight schedule penciled in starting tomorrow, yet I know that anything can happen. We planned a similar trip in 2020 and the day before our flight, Covid hit hard at our destination so we could not go. Tomorrow is in the hands of God. If He wills us to stay home, it is because He has a better plan.