All or nothing
Look to him, and be radiant;
So your faces shall never be ashamed. Psalm 34:5
Read Matthew 19:27—30
Peter speaks in extremes, ‘We’ve left everything.’ Jesus does, too: ‘You’ll sit on thrones. You’ll receive a hundredfold. You’ll receive eternal life. We’re talking eternity. We’re talking without limit.’ Really, I’m used to it, but I need to remember that if I heard it for the first time I must be struck by the fact that everything about what Jesus says is extreme! I admit that I’m prone to tone down the extremes. For example, in following Jesus I’ve left some things. Not everything. I’ll receive life. But, really, eternal life? I hardly dare put reality into the words. So I suppose this is what a devotional time with God is meant to do for me. Tonight’s time gives me the opportunity to really face the truth of matters before God and to move out of half-heartedness into whole-heartedness, out of half faith onto great faith.
Prayer
Lord, it is true! It is true that you give yourself to me without reserve. Often enough I recognise this when I come to pray. You gave yourself all the way to death. That is the sign that you had nothing more to give, that nothing of yourself has been withheld. Therefore I am yours. I am wholly yours. Let nothing I have hold or keep me from being utterly and all yours. And you have promised me eternal life in all its fullness. If I do not have that from you I have nothing at all. For you want me to have nothing less than that. What freedom you have made me for! And how totally I belong!