Consider This
by LuAnne Anderson
Feeling rather pensive this morning, my thoughts continue to drift to my children. As a parent, you want to make things easy for them. Put them in a nice house, with good neighbors. You want them to have the best car, with air-conditioning. You don’t want them to just have a job. You want them to find their career in something they love to do, applying their God-given gifts, surrounded by positive influences. You pray they will be among people who will encourage them to develop to their fullest, and that they will never be harmed, get sick, or hurt emotionally by anyone. As I considered this euphoric life style, the Lord said, “I want all of this, and more for you. All I want is your faithfulness, and love. 1Seek Me, and you will find Me. Knock and the door shall be opened. Ask and you shall receive. 2Seek Me first, and I will supply for All your needs. 3And when you ask for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
He said, “How much more, do you think I want to do for my children? He wants to give us so much, but we continue to follow those dead bones of the flesh.”
I thought, “We settle for less, because we don’t want to give Him more.” And what more does He want? Just for us to take a little time out of our busy schedules and sit at the feet of our Father, our Creator, and have an intimate relationship with Him.
God has given us so much. He gave us this beautiful place to live, with so much life, captivating, intriguing, with more variances of color than we could ever see in a lifetime. Have you ever considered when you are in the mountains, or by the sea, or simply watching a sunrise, or sunset, how could anyone question if there is a God?
How majestic is this beauty all around us, and all His creation. He created the animals to sustain us, and some to comfort and entertain us. His love is all consuming. And isn’t it amazing how our bodies are so intricately made, every part designed to work together with the other?
God gives us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we still struggle to give Him, even the smallest amount of our precious time. Consider all of this, and so much more He has given us, and still it was not enough. He had to make the ultimate sacrifice to give of Himself; His only Son died a brutal death, that we might have life. He invested everything, as a good parent would.
Some of you still question if this is true? “Did this man, whom I don’t even know, really come upon the earth, to give His life for me?”
Please consider this:
Jesus began his life with obscurity, born in a small village, the child of a peasant woman. He worked as a carpenter until he was thirty and then, for the next three years, became an itinerant preacher. He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where was born. He was turned over to his enemies and executed on a cross between to thieves. While he was dying his executors gambled for the only piece of property he owned – his coat. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today he is the centerpiece of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together, have not affected the lives of people upon this earth as powerfully as Jesus has.
One solitary life. Jesus has transformed the world by changing one life at a time, one day at a time. How is he changing your life?
Think about it.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
1Matthew 7:7-8 2Matthew 6:33 3John 14:14 |
