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Scripture for the day: John 6:37-39 All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.
Thought for the day: A couple of days ago I advanced the idea that the Advent of our Lord was a matter of obedience on His part to the will of the Father. As true as that is, there’s more to it than just this one moment of surrendered obedience. His whole life was characterized by a yielded and obedient spirit. How many times do we read of Jesus making His was to some remote spot on the side of a mountain so He could commune with the Father, so He could get direction in His life? Obedience to the will of the Father wasn’t an occasional conscience act; it was the passion of His very life. As this same passion overtakes us, we find our ears open to His voice and nothing less than Divine guidance with suffice.
The obedience Jesus displayed throughout His life was without limits. He always stood ready to do the will of the Father, no matter the direction it took Him, no matter the cost, even the death of the cross. But, as thorough as that desire to please the Father was, His life was characterized by obedience in the smallest of things, as well as the greatest. I think of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman by the well. John said, “He needed to go through Samaria” (John 4:2). Well, we know He could have gone around Samaria, which most Jews would gladly have done. He needed to go through Samaria because there was a woman there who needed to know her life had not been wasted and, even in her condition, there was still hope. The lesson: only whole-hearted obedience in all things is true surrender. But where does this sense of “Thy will be done,” come from?
There is a sense in which this desire to be obedient to the entire will of God is characterized by a determination on our part to do all He asks. Period. And that determination is a valuable thing, as far as it goes. However, as with so much of our relationship with the Lord, our determination will only take us just so far. As in so many other arenas of life, it’s not how hard we try but how fully we surrender that makes the difference.
Jesus wasn’t completely obedient to the will of the Father only because He decided within Himself to be so. He was completely obedient in everything because he emptied Himself, took the form of a servant, humbled Himself “becoming obedient to death.” Paul reminds us that we are to have this same mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus. It is the person willing to live as a servant, willing to be humbled before God, who will find the Father’s strength at work enabling that one to obey without question.
The danger is that we will trust in ourselves to be obedient, working with all our might to follow through on our commitment. We must, through conscious trust, accept that it is only as we bow to His sovereignty and resign ourselves to rely completely and utterly on His ability that we finally turn away from ourselves and recognize the need for dependence on Him. And that requires that we exercise the faith that is ours, which we will talk about next time.
Now go take on your world. - Bill