You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. –John 5:39-40
These verses are absolutely profound! As I read them this morning, God revealed to me that this is the way that many of us still worship him today. Think about it with me; whenever we Christians today want to prove our love to God, we read and memorize more scriptures, we try to pray longer prayers, we try to preach to as many people as we can, we get involved in every ministry there is to get involved with, etc. All these are well and good, but how do they really prove that we love God?
What God desires from us as Christians are hearts that seek after his. As Jesus said in the verses above; “these are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” It is good that Christians want to do all those things I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but we should not get so caught up in doing them that we forget our intentions for doing them in the first place. The length of time we spend praying does not show how much we love God. Memorizing a thousand verses does not prove that we love God anymore than the man that only knows John 3:16. Being involved with 20 ministries does not necessarily prove our love to God.
When our hearts seek after God’s heart, we will want to spend every waking moment with him; not because we have to, but because we want to. When we truly love God, we will want to meditate on his words in order to get to know him even better. When we do all of these, the knowledge of God through his word will become like fire shot up in our bones, and we will be compelled to share him with everyone we come in contact with. We are not to do things to prove to God that we love him, instead, we are to do them because we love him. Do you see the difference?
We cannot possess eternal life simply by the things we do; God searches the heart and judges whether or not our intentions match our actions. If we look at the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42, we will see an illustration of my point. Martha was distracted by doing many things for Christ, but Mary chose to sit at his feet and just listen to him. Jesus said that Mary chose what was better and it will never be taken away from her.
Brethren, I want to challenge you to avoid worshipping God as busybodies. Don’t get so caught up in religion that you forget about relationship. Instead, seek after his heart, and serve him because of the love you have for him. I dare you to choose what is better today!
Stay blessed and spread the word.
|
CHOOSE WHAT IS BETTER