What Must I Do?

Good Morning,

Luke 18:18-23 (NIV)
A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'"
"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.

What do these verses say to you this morning? For some of us what they speak of is only that it's difficult for the wealthy to achieve heaven. But, there's much more, I think, that Jesus is saying and that these verses speak to.

What I heard this morning was, "What am I willing to forgo, give up, put aside, do without, or...for lack of a better word...sacrifice, in order to get that treasure in heaven of which Jesus speaks?" Jesus isn't only speaking to the wealthy or rich in these verses that we read. No, He's speaking to every one of us. I say that because I believe that we all have things in our lives that need to be left behind when we accept Jesus as Savior and put our hope in God. Yes, for some people it IS giving up wealth in order to be able to follow Jesus. But, that's not true for us all, of course. For many of us there are other things that simply must be left behind.

The problem is that it is difficult, just as it was for the rich ruler, for us to give up the things that are not of the Kingdom of God. For some people it's impossible. For those, we must pray. Then, for others of us, we leave this or that behind only to sometimes turn back and pick it up again. Then, leave it...pick it up...leave it...pick it up...in an ongoing struggle that seems never ending. What our problem might very well be is the fact that we're trying to do it in our own strength and under our own power. Wrong way to go about it, I'm afraid. What we need to do is to lay whatever hinders us from being totally unburdened for the Lord at the foot of the cross and allow Jesus to free us.

So, one might ask, "If I do that, will I never go back to it?" I wish I could say an unqualified "Yes" to that question, but the fact is, some of us continue to struggle in this. Why that is, I cannot answer. I wish I knew why and I wish I knew how have those struggles cease...and then to be able to tell others of the "secret" of it. But, fact is...I don't have the answers or the secret.

What is placed before us all today, however, is that we must all look to see what, if anything, we have that must be left behind in our walk with Jesus. First, we've got to be able to recognize it. Then, we can begin to leave it behind.

Love, peace, and blessings,

David