This week's 'thought' comes from Tim Challies and is entitled: "Jesus Never Moves On" (www.Challies.com
July 3, 2013).
I share it with you because
it is such a common scenario -- even in the church -- and such a wise,
yet often overlooked Gospel-like response. We can (in the midst of temptation)
forget that as believers our relationship with Jesus lays the groundwork for
how we are to live all of life.To "love one another as I have loved you," would resolve many an intense struggle before it even arose or got to the point where it was so difficult. The way God in Christ deals with us should lay the groundwork, and be the blueprint, for how we in turn relate to others. Challies reminds us of this truth through a conversation he had with another believer over dinner. Enjoy.
Jesus
Never Moves On
"She just seems so much easier
to live with than my wife." It was a
conversation over dinner between sessions at a conference, a conversation in a
state far from home. The man felt his heart drawn away from his wife or,
perhaps more accurately, toward another woman, a woman who was not his wife, a
woman in his church, a woman who was another man’s wife. He believed these thoughts
were involuntary, that the ideas were extrinsic to him, that Satan was tempting
him with a sin perfectly suited to his weaknesses, to his heart idolatries. He
was battling hard to keep the temptation from turning into fantasy, and from
there to action.
“My wife is difficult to live
with at times. She is needy. She is complicated. And this other woman seems so
easy to figure out, so simple to live with.” He saw it not as a judgment of
his wife as much as a simple statement of fact: it is difficult to make a life
with another person. On the one side he had a woman who needed so much from him
and on the other side he had a woman who looked like she would only give
without taking. He knew it was a lie, he hated every thought that drew his
heart toward her, and yet day after day it crept up and presented him with what
promised to be an easier path.
We
shifted the conversation away from his wife, away from the other woman, and
toward Christ. Sometimes it is difficult to see how the gospel applies to life;
sometimes it is not difficult at all. The Bible tells us that a man is to
love his wife in such a way that he imitates the love Christ has for his
church, for his people. And if there is anything at all we know about Christ’s
love for his people it is this: it is a love that will never end. Though we may
stray for a time, he will draw us back. Though we may give up on Christ,
he will never give up on us. His love will endure. “For I am convinced
that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all
creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Christ’s
love for the church provides the model of a husband’s love for his wife. This is the deepest kind of challenge for the
Christian husband. Christ will never grow so worn out that he will shift his
attention toward someone else instead. His heart will never stray. His
affections will never waver. He will never grow so weary of us that he
moves on. I
could hardly blame him if he did. There must be people out there who would
prove a lot easier to deal with than me. There must be people out there whose
hearts are less sinful than mine, who would progress in holiness faster than I
would, who would worship more wholeheartedly and who would live with greater
gratitude. And yet he has chosen me, he has set his love on me, and nothing
will cause him to abandon me. He will never give up.
This
husband is called to love with that same endurance. He is called to love with the same hope, the
same dedication. The security he has in Christ is the security his wife must
have in him. This is the gospel. This is the display of the gospel
in marriage.
This life, says the Bible, is but a vapor, or mist, that appears in the morning and is gone by noonday (James 4:14). We have only so many years to serve Jesus. We have only so many years to live for His glory. We have only so much time to seek to reflect to the world the type of love and commitment that our Father, and our Lord Jesus, have for us. To reflect an other-worldly type love that is beyond measure -- higher, wider, deeper and longer than we are even able to begin to understand (Ephesians 3:18-19).
And how do we do that? It
must begin by stepping back, taking a breath, looking into the Word, and
considering how richly we've been graced. How richly we've been graced with a
love we did everything not to deserve, and still do so much
to be unworthy of -- even in our best of days. Only when we take the
time to honestly consider the unbelievable depths of the grace and mercy
and forgiveness and commitment and innumerable "second chances" shown
to us by God, can we even begin to seek to love others as He has
loved us.
Do it now, before the
temptation grows into full-blown sin, and leads to the needless death of a
relationship that could be salvaged by an earnest and prayerful glance at
the Gospel of God's unfathomable love for us.
Hoping To Fix Your Eyes
Upon Jesus, Pastor Jeff
