Why We'll Always Celebrate Christmas!
When It's All Been Said and Done
Saturday, December 3, 2003
My Prayer Today
Dear God, Help me to use each day to your glory. Amen.
Bible Verses
Mark 8: 34-48
34Then he (Jesus) called his disciples and the crowds to come over and listen. “If any of you wants to be my follower,” he told them, “you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. 35If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life. 36And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? 37Is anything worth more than your soul? 38If a person is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, I, the Son of Man, will be ashamed of that person when I return in the glory of my Father with the holy angels.”
Gaining the World?
One of the greatest challenges we face as Americans in the 21st century is that to follow Jesus generally means to go against our culture. Jesus asks the question, “How do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul?” Of course the answer Jesus expects to the second question is—“NO!” nothing is worth more than our souls. But that first question haunts us. Most Americans, including most American Christians busy ourselves each day with “gaining the world.” We wouldn’t put it that way. We’d say that we are just trying to put food on the table, but is that really true. Are any of us who are reading this devotion REALLY just trying to put food on the table. Most of us have enough food for our tables, and more stored in refrigerators, freezers and pantries. We also know that the grocery store is just down the road and we have ample resources to buy any kind of food we want. You may say, “Well, I don’t Chris. I can barely make ends meet.” That statement may be true, but more often than not if the statement IS true, it’s because we are trying to gain the world, rather than seeking to save our souls!
Money has a funny way of moving from being a servant to being a master, doesn’t it? At first maybe we do just want to make ends meet. Then it becomes wanting just a little bigger house, just a little nicer car, just a little more secure retirement. We’re not trying to gain the whole world—we just want a comfortable part of it, right? That’s the attitude that moves us closer and closer to losing our souls according to Jesus. So much of the stuff that we just had to have last year, is either already broken or obsolete, or forgotten. What did you get for Christmas this year? What about last year? What about five years ago? Do you remember? Things don’t satisfy, only Jesus does. Yet, we find it so easy to believe the commercials that tell us if we just had the newer, bigger, better, faster widget that our lives would be complete.
Steven Covey put it best when he said that so many of us are climbing up the corporate ladder only to find that when we get to the top rung, the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall! I know that most of us at New Life aren’t climbing the corporate ladder, but that doesn’t meant that we don’t focus on goals that aren’t equally worldly does it? Sometimes even seeking to do everything we can for our children is a ladder that’s leaning on the wrong wall. Certainly, God calls us to love our children and to train them up in the way they should go, but sometimes we think that means giving them everything. I once heard a Christian speaker say, “Our parents were so busy trying to give us everything they didn’t have, that they forgot to give us what they did have.” What he was talking about was substituting material goods for Christian virtues and values. He made a great point.
Jesus wanted us to recognize that no one can pursue worldly ends as a primary goal in life and end up with a soul. When I was a second year seminarian, the pastor I worked under made a statement I’ve always remembered, “Anyone can become a millionaire, if he is willing to sell his soul.” He wasn’t saying that all millionaires have sold their souls, he was saying that the pursuit of “gaining the whole world” is often filled with compromise, with selfish ambition, with “short cuts” and ultimately with sin. What profit is there if at the end of our lives we have become the richest tenant in hell? That’s a tough way of putting it, but Jesus is the one who raised the point, not me. Jesus is the one who challenged us to remember that unless we set aside our selfish ambition, shoulder our crosses daily and follow Him that we can never be His disciples.
As we work our way into the new year of 2004, all of us are no doubt taking at least a cursory look at our lives and asking ourselves where we can grow and improve in the year 2004. If Jesus is our Lord and Savior, then those kinds of questions turn toward the focus of how we can follow Him more fully. One of the key means to a more fully devoted life of following Jesus is to take a good, hard look at our understanding of “wealth,” and of what is truly valuable. If we are still seeking to “gain the whole world,” and calling ourselves Christians we are deceiving ourselves. As followers of Jesus, one of the most important transformations that takes place is that we understand ourselves as stewards of God’s resources, rather than as “owners” of our own. Martin Luther said that there are three “conversions” necessary in every person: the conversion of the heart, the conversation of the mind, and the conversion of the “purse.” Of the three, Luther said that the conversion of the purse was the most difficult. Why is that? Could it not be that it is because we all desire control, and wealth gives us a sense of control, of security. We believe that if we just accumulate enough wealth that we will be “safe.”
Jesus once told a parable about a man who was so wealthy that he literally didn’t know what to do. He finally came up with a plan. He would tear down his existing barns and build new ones. Then he would take life easy, living off his bounty. The problem was that the very night he finished his new barns God appeared and said, “You fool! This very night your soul is required of you.” There it is—the man gained the “whole world,” but he invested nothing into his soul, so he lost it.
As we start 2004, what a great time to take an inventory of what we are storing up—wealth and riches, “the whole world,” or treasures in heaven. Jesus told us that we cannot serve two masters—we can’t serve God and money. That’s another way of saying that there is no eternal profit for us even if we gain the whole world, if we lose our souls. What are you investing in the kingdom of God right now? Where are you seeking to gain the “whole world”? If God were to require our souls this very night, are we certain that we would be able to face Him with joy and gladness, because we have a relationship with Him and are being faithful followers, or would our souls be forfeit? These are not rhetorical questions, my friends. One night (or day) God WILL require our souls of us, and the only question will be to whom does that soul belong? Is it Jesus or the world, to Jesus or ourselves, to Jesus or the devil? We can be sure that if Jesus IS the Savior and Lord of our lives that day by day we will be looking and acting more and more like Him. We will be investing as He did—in eternity, rather than in the transitory things of the world. I pray that for each and everyone of us 2004, will be the year when we will become serious about seeing that God is FIRST in all areas of our faith and life. For when God is first, we can be sure that we will profit greatly. We may not gain the whole world, but we WILL have gained our souls, by His grace and to His glory!
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