LUKE 11:33-36 – No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”
THEME OF THE DAY: SINGLE-EYED DEVOTION. When it comes to following the Lord Jesus, He doesn’t leave any “wiggle room” for would-be disciples. A person must be “all in” with Jesus, or “all out” with Jesus. He will either be Lord of all in our lives or not Lord at all in our lives. We simply cannot have “double-vision” – one eye attached to the world, and one eye attached to Jesus. He won’t accept such terms of discipleship.
One of the most penetrating, and yes, even uncomfortable passages of scripture driving this home to us is found in Luke’s gospel. As we read it, pay attention to the repeated words of Jesus, “cannot be my disciple.” He is not allowing any allegiance, any earthly attachment, any human affection, or any material possession be in competition with Him for supremacy in our lives. Here is the passage . . .
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:25-33).
It would be wise for us to take time, maybe extended time, and ask the Lord to search us to see if we are living the Christian life with single-eyed devotion to Him or self-deceived in thinking we can “heart share” our lives with Him and the world. As we do allow Him to search us, let’s remember what single-eyed devotion means; all of life, our talents, time, treasure, gifts . . . everything is held with open palms, all we are and have, before the Lord to do what He would with us. And remember, the Christian life is “all in” or “all out” and that is defined by the Apostle John – Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever (1 John 2:15-17). May the Lord find us living with “perfect”, single-eyed devotion to Him.
PRAYER: “Father, protect me from the self-deception of thinking I may be attached to this world and the next.”
QUOTE: “We simply cannot have a love for the Lord and a love for the world. They are opposites and enemies. ”
Because of Him,
Pastor Jim