Barnabas Bulletin ~ 0040 

WITH JESUS THE CHOICE IS

VERY CLEAR

The Bible never ceases to amaze me! It continually speaks to me of the ways of God. Recently I was reading again the summary of Jesus to His Sermon on the Mount in Luke 6:46-49. In it He makes two very clear statements that affect every one of us! We either hear what He says - and obey, or we hear what He says - and do not obey. It is as simple as that. Listen to His opening statement: “But why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?” Far too often we live our lives as a contradiction. The truth is, if Jesus is really LORD of our lives WE WILL DO WHAT HE SAYS!

  The two statements Jesus makes here are:

1. “Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: ‘He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when (not if) the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock.’”

2. “But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”

Jesus never leaves us in doubt as to what He says and means. To follow Him, to know Him, and to honestly be able to call Him “Lord” means a total commitment on our part to DO WHAT HE TELLS US! Both men heard what Jesus said. Yet their lives went in totally opposite directions. One became a great success – the other an absolute disaster! Why? The “disaster” man did not carry through into a practical outworking what he heard from Jesus! He did it “his way,” and not what Jesus said. His actions said he believed and trusted his own judgment more than what Jesus declared! That’s a tragedy!

Each of us – right now – are in that position of either doing or not doing what Jesus has said to us. If we are not happy with “our lot in life,” then we need to look again at how closely we are listening to Jesus, and how determined we are to demonstrate by our actions that we do love Him enough to do what He tells us. He who heard, and did, gained everything. He who heard, and did nothing, lost everything! There are no “in betweens”; we either do or we don’t obey Jesus!

My personal experience with Jesus is teaching me that every time Jesus speaks to me I have to do something. I have to demonstrate my love to Him by a practical response to what He says. Nothing happens until I do. A promise of God remains just that (a promise), until we release it by an action of simple obedience. If I do not believe strongly enough that Jesus has spoken to me, then I do nothing – and gain nothing. But if I believe His voice strongly enough to commit to it by an act of obedience, then I release His promise to come to pass! This is a vital area of Christianity today. We stand or fall upon what we hear from Jesus – and what we do with what we hear!

  Far too often we will “pray about it” rather than “act upon it.” We show that we have big doubts in this area of hearing God’s voice. Yet this is the very heart of Christianity. To be a Christian means to follow Jesus. And to follow Jesus we must know Who He is, what He is saying, and what He wants of us. We deceive ourselves if we think that Christianity is only about Bible knowledge, praying, going to church, and paying tithes, etc. That is a pathetic substitute to personally knowing the voice of Jesus in our own lives. The strength and power of Christianity is in our ability to recognize the voice of Jesus, and living with a total commitment of love to Him that demonstrates its genuineness by our obedience to whatever He says. That is His clear message to those who would follow Him.

The “stakes” are high! We stand to gain everything through this commitment to Jesus, or we stand to lose everything because of a lack of commitment to what He says. The choice is yours, and the choice is mine. I cannot obey for you, and you cannot obey for me. It is between you and Jesus alone – and the fruit of that choice is demonstrated by whether we stand or fall, succeed or fail, in our walk as a Christian. The choice is clear with Jesus. What are you doing about it? – Rodney W. Francis.

Bible  Readings:  Luke 6:17-49; Matthew 5, 6, & 7, (especially Matthew 7:24-29).  

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