May 30, 2014
The Road Most Traveled
“No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you
don’t care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.”
John 5:44
Jonah’s epiphany, “For my salvation comes from the Lord alone”
(Jonah 2:9), was lost on the religious leaders confronting Jesus. Jesus told
them they could not believe in him as God’s Messiah because to do so required
them to take their eyes off of their own self-efforts to make themselves right
with God. There is still a lot of that going around in our
performance-based-acceptance culture.
There is a huge temptation in our
American culture to transfer what works in the economic systems of the world to
the spiritual life. Surely the success of the self-made person, operating in
the market places of the world, will find similar success applying the same
standards to their spiritual life. Certainly their attributes of
self-discipline, SMART goals, and hard work will transfer well to the spiritual
realm. Actually you can build a good
life through spiritual self-effort, for a while. Eventually though, the reality
of Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goes before
destruction, and haughtiness before a fall,” will come crashing down on the
self-made person.
The challenge for the followers
of Jesus is to find the balance between being an active, engaging doer of the
Word and resting in the incomprehensible love of God. Martha’s sister Mary
discovered this balance sitting at the feet of Jesus and she heard Jesus affirm
her choice: “There is only one thing
worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken
away from her.” (Luke 10:42a).
The Apostle Paul, reflecting on his
life as a religious leader and Pharisee, made the same discovery as Mary: “I once thought these things were valuable,
but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes,
everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing
Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting
it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no
longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become
righteous through faith in Christ” (Philippians 3:7-9).
I made this same discovery and
when I knelt to be ordained, I opened my Bible to this passage in Philippians.
I have also discovered something else. Because the temptations of the American
culture are so insidious, I must rediscover Mary and Paul’s discovery with
regularity, lest I find myself taking the road most traveled.
Sē’lah
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(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my
correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about
these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. The meditations are
published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/
and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may
subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by
subscription.
Publications by Alex M. Knight:
·
Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New
Testament and Psalms has been
published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.
·
The second
edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.
·
Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus
Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
