Why have we chosen to be Christians and accept Christ as our Savior? What motivated us to answer his knock? What is our motivation for going about and doing the Kingdom’s business? Why do we faithfully keep Christ’s commandments to us? These are all very important questions that we should ask ourselves.
Every Thursday night we have a men’s fellowship group that meets at the corps. During these fellowship meetings we do different things such as studying the Word, work projects, and fun nights. About three weeks ago we decided that we were going to study commitment and to see if we could find scripture verses that talked about commitment. I think we all started with a concordance to see if we could find the word commitment in the Bible. Well the most we got from that approach was a few verses on committing various sins. The next thing most of us did was to try to find scripture verses that illustrated commitment. I chose to talk about Stephen’s martyrdom in the book of Acts (chapter 7:54-60). I talked about the commitment that Stephen showed bearing his cross and persecution. That he endured to the very end, even asking God to not hold this sin against his murderers. To me this was the ultimate commitment.
We also talked about the costs of the commitment to follow Christ. This is something that I don’t feel we teach enough of. But Christ tells us that we should “Count the costs” of being his disciple (Luke Chapter 15:25-34). We have to give up everything in order to be his disciple. We can not have our hands still clinging to worldly values, possessions, beliefs, but our hands have to be empty so that we are free to do the work of the Kingdom. This is easier said than done for most Christians (including myself), but we need to be very mindful of it. Do you want God to use you for his Kingdom? Give up all that you have and depend solely on him. I think sometimes we feel that as long as we are willing to give up everything then that is ok with God. This definitely wasn’t what the early Christian church believed. They followed Christ’s commandments literally which I feel is something that we need to get back to. The early Christian church followed what Jesus taught literally and followed the spirit of the Mosaic Law. Today I feel that we do the opposite, we choose to follow the spirit of what Christ taught instead of following what he taught literally. But that is a subject for another time.
Eventually we got to the question of motivation. What is our motivation for making the commitment to follow Christ? There were numerous motivations for accepting Christ that were brought forward. The most prevalent of these was fear. Now I feel fear is a very healthy motivation for accepting Christ. Christ tells us in Luke that we should “Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell.” So I think fear is a very valid motivation for coming to Christ. But I don’t think fear as a motivation can help us endure till the very end. People who live in fear at some point or another will rise up in rebellion to remove the cause of that fear. We have to transition the motive of fear into love for our Jesus.
Love is the only motivation/reason along with God’s grace that will allow us to endure to the end. So I urge all Christians to continue to grow closer to Christ everyday. Get to know him through reading his word. I think if we make an honest attempt at getting into his word everyday we can only help but get closer to him and grow in a loving relationship with him. God bless and keep fighting!!
No comments:
Post a Comment