Time with Jesus - Friday, 18 May
2012
Hi all,
How good are you at looking to
the Lord? Remember that partial obedience is disobedience. It’s not my strong
point. Don’t take your eyes off Jesus. You could drown is a pool of despair.
Blessings
Jim & Phyllida Strickland
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Time with Jesus – Friday, 18 May 2012
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INTRODUCTION
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DAILY
LIGHT EVENING SCRIPTURES
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BE
FREE
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The vast majority of men and women are either
arrogantly over self- confident or pathetically under self-confident. People
say they can do anything and everything and others say they cannot do
anything. Both concepts do not follow the perfect pattern of Jesus. He was
completely aware of Who He was. He didn’t behave like a slave driver and was
not a wimp.
Jesus wasn’t proud. That is sinful. He was also not
a push-over. He was always fully in control of everything round Him.
Everything He did was motivated by love for His Father and love for people.
He allowed the people to do their best or their worst without any attempt to
control them. Because of His love for people, he fed 5000 using a schoolboy’s
lunch. Then he avoided the same people because He didn’t want them to see Him
merely as someone who would give them a free lunch!
He walked on the water of the sea of Galilee in
order to reach His disciples. This was not merely a whim to demonstrate his
Divine ability. He invited Peter to do the same. Peter was partly successful.
He stopped focusing on Jesus.
We forget that Jesus could walk on water because He was
focussed on His Father, not because He was Divine. His Father told Him to
walk on the water so He did. He only ever did what His Father told Him to do.
John expressed it as follows: 30
By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I
hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek
not to please myself but him who sent me.
John 5:30 TNIV
In the Christian life there is no such thing as “luck”!
Jesus didn’t get lucky and walk on water. His Father told Him to do it or He
wouldn’t have even tried. Then, when Peter asked Him if he could walk on
water, Jesus agreed. There is no question in my mind that His Father said “Yes”
so Jesus also said “Yes”. The tragedy of the situation was Peter stopped looking
to Jesus. He could easily have drowned.
This really is the central issue in this morning’s
meditation. The moment we take our eyes off Jesus we start sinking. If He
doesn’t rescue us, we will drown in a sea of complaints and dissatisfaction.
It’s a regular occurrence for most of us and often strikes after significant
achievement in His Kingdom. Poor old Elijah won the Lord’s battle on Mount
Carmel. Almost immediately thereafter he was running away from a woman! He
stopped looking to God. So Peter and Elijah had a similar problem. So do we.
Often as I look at the circumstances confronting me
I feel overwhelmed by the task Very quickly I start to sink into what John Bunyan
called “The Slough of Despond’. You’ll find that his “Pilgrim” did the same. In
that “slough” things get worse and we go have our own “Pity Party” There is
only one “cure” Fix your eyes on Jesus. In Hebrews we read: 2 Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished
this race we're in. Study how he did it.
Because he never lost sight of where he was headed--that exhilarating finish
in and with God--he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame,
whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honour, right alongside God.
Hebrews 12:2 MSG Jesus is the only “cure”
for this sickness. If you don’t focus on Him you’ll drown. Look to Him and
win!
Jim & Phyllida Strickland
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26 Let us not become proud. Let us not make each
other angry. Let us not want what belongs to others.
Galatians 5:26 NIrV
24 Then Gideon said to them, "Do me a favour. Each of
you give me the earrings from your loot." (Their enemies, the
Ishmaelites, wore gold earrings.) 25 The men of Israel answered, "Yes, we'll give them
to you." So they spread out a coat. Each man took the earrings from his
loot and dropped them on it. 26 The gold earrings Gideon
had asked for weighed 40 pounds. This did not include the half-moon
ornaments, the earrings, the purple clothes worn by the kings of Midian, and
the chains from their camels' necks. 27 Then
Gideon used the gold to make an idol and placed it in his hometown, Ophrah.
All Israel chased after it there as though it were a prostitute. It became a
trap for Gideon and his family.
Judges 8:24-27 GW
5 Are you looking for great things for yourself? Don't
look for them, because I'm going to bring disaster on all people,
declares the LORD. But wherever you go I will let you escape with your
life.'"
Jeremiah 45:5 GW
7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations
from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I
was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me
and keep me from becoming proud.
2 Corinthians 12:7 NLT
3 Don't be selfish; don't try to impress others. Be
humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. 4 Don't look out
only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.
Philippians 2:3-4 NLT
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or
boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not
demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being
wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices
whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses
faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT
28 Then
Jesus said, "Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy
burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take
My yoke upon you. Let Me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is
easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light."
Matthew 11:28-30 NLT
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Sometimes as I read Scripture I simply shake my head.
I think I’ll never get this right before the day I’m dead!
The standards are impossible for me to ever scale;
And every time I look at them, I’m certain I will fail!
It isn’t the right attitude; I know this fact for sure.
But for this sort of sickness, they haven’t found a cure!
Sicknesses like laziness, like sloth and unbelief,
Are sure to bring a Christian to a place of utter grief!
I’m only in the first grade in Father’s School of life,
Designed to make us “better” and keep us free from “strife”.
But His is the Professor, and the standard He has set,
Is far beyond the “doing” of anyone I’ve met.
I know that there are people who are different from me;
They like to face the challenge of impossibility!
For them it is the “essence” that gets them on the go.
Are they the Christian superstars whom no one gets to know?
I’ve never ever met one. Perhaps they don’t exist,
Except in the appearance of some thick and foggy mist?
But this is a comparison between the pair of us.
And this is rather odious; it makes me want to cuss;
And take it to the Father and moan, “O woe is
me.
I’ll never ever get there as sure as sure can be”.
It’s called a “pity-party” We have them on our own.
We belly-ache and mumble and grit our teeth and moan.
I wonder if there’s any folk who act the same as me?
I hope not, for that’s surely isn’t Christianity.
But I’ve a sort of feeling that I am not unique.
I never seem to hear it from those to whom I speak.
They seem to ooze with confidence and say that all is fine,
When secretly their problems are just as bad as mine!
There has to be an answer. Perhaps my faith is small?
But Jesus is the answer to folk like me who fall.
Then, when my party’s over and I come to my sense;
Admit I have a problem; confess that I am dense.
That’s when my Lord and Master appears upon the scene;
He points out just how silly that I have surely been,
And draws me to His bosom and says to me, “My Son
You have to keep on going ‘til the race of life is won.”
Jim Strickland - Written 17thth
May 2012
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