More of Jesus! As I drove home tonight how my mind was desperate for this phrase. The past few weeks have felt like a constant wrestle against my emotions and feelings of the world I am taking in around me. It seems as if everywhere I turn and conversations I have the weight of sin is heavy on my mind.
My eyes see men and women created in the image of God, yet my ears hear the sorrow in my patients’ voices crippled by anxiety, depression, and loneliness because they live without God. As I am out in the community, I hear store goers spewing vulgar words from their mouths without a care for others because they live without God. It seems that the disdain for life ever grows in the masses. Oh, if only the souls of men perceived their desperate need for the Savior. The only One who loves them deeply and desires to forgive them of their sins and call them from death to life (John 5:24).
As I heard this past Sunday “How is God different than us? He loves! God loves! He loves to forgive, and He longs to help us. God in His mercy always renews a repentant sinner without fail. ‘God’s thoughts are love, pity, and tenderness. Mens' thoughts are forgetfulness, ingratitude and hardheartedness’ (C. Spurgeon)” (B. Kinzel).
How true this is. I pray you live not another day without Christ. I pray you seek to know more of Jesus. I pray you desire to live in the light rather than darkness (John 3:19). Darkness only leads to despair and death, but the light of Christ leads to life everlasting.
Do not be deceived. The Light of the World has come, and His name is Jesus (John 1:1-14). The solution for everything in life is Jesus. With each surpassing day may you know more of Him!
As I have been wrestling with the sorrows of those around me, I have been reminded of how much I need more of Jesus. How quickly I forget and can become ungrateful forgetting about my Lord’s steadfast, ceaseless, and perfect love (John 3:16, Eph. 3:14-21, Lam. 3:21-25). Oh, how I must tether my heart to the truth of Scripture and remind myself moment by moment of these truths so I do not collapse by the weight of my sin and the world around me.
It reminds me of a section I read in a book this summer about leaving burdens with God as follows: “I knew a Christian lady who had a very heavy earthly burden. It took away her sleep and her appetite, and there was danger of her health breaking down under it. One day, when it seemed especially heavy, she noticed lying on the table near her a little tract called “Hannah’s Faith.’” Attracted by the title, she picked it up and began to read it, little knowing, however, that it was to create a revolution in her whole experience. The story was of a poor woman who had been carried triumphantly through life of unusual sorrow. She was giving the history of her life to a kind visitor on one occasion. When she finished the visitor said, ‘Oh, Hannah, I do not see how you could bear so much sorrow!’ ‘I did not bear it,’ was the quick reply ‘the Lord bore it for me.’ ‘Yes,’ said the visitor, ‘that is the right way. We must take our troubles to the Lord.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Hannah, ‘but we must do more than that. We must leave them there. Most people,’ she continued, ‘take their burdens to Him, but they bring them away with them again, and are just as worried and unhappy as ever. But I take mine and leave them with Him, and come away and forget them. If the worry comes back, I take it to Him again. I do this over and over, until at last I just forget I have any worries and am at perfect rest.’”[1]
Perfect rest, perfect peace come in knowing Jesus! So, my friends, as you come to celebrate Christmas remember you are celebrating the birth of Jesus. Jesus - the promised Messiah, the Savior of the World, the Great I Am, the King of Kings, and the Giver of Life (John 10:27-28) - may you aim to know more of Jesus. And may your heart not wander from His Truth. As the song lyrics go “Let my eyes see nothing but Your glory, my Lord. Let this heart not wander from Your mercy, My Lord. May I always linger in Your presence, my Lord. I will ever praise You, You are worthy, my Lord.”[2]
[1] Hannah Whithall Smith. The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life (Zweihander Press, 2019), 39. [2] https://youtu.be/kZA6EgajwIc (see also https://youtu.be/cIR6kpAdFyM)