Heart Tracks - Magnificent Obsession

"So no one can become My disciple without giving up everything for Me." Luke 14:33..."Nothing is truly established until it has been yielded up and received the brand of the cross upon it.....T. Austin-Sparks

One of the great joys I have is serving in the food pantry at the church I minister in. Besides the distribution of food to families in need, we get to pray individually with every person that comes in. For me, that's the best part, and yesterday might have been the most moving experience I've had.

A man, we'll call him James, came in. He was likely in his mid to late 30's, and he and his wife had 8 children, ages 3 to 16. He also had Multiple Sclerosis. He told me it was advancing at an accelerated pace. Because of his affliction, he could no longer work in the field he'd previously been in. Serving him was an honor and blessing. As I prayed with him, I had no sense that he was giving in to self-pity. His thoughts were with his wife and children, and though he didn't speak it, I knew he had to be thinking about what how his advancing disease would affect them. I sensed that the Holy Spirit spoke and touched him as we prayed. I'm hoping that I'll get to do more of the same with him the next time he comes in. I was blessed to be able to do all of that, but I was also convicted, for myself, but also for so many in the church today. Convicted of how often I, we, cannot see past our own needs and problems in order to not only see someone else, but to see Him. The problem is only increasing in this "I and me" age we live in.

We are a people obsessed with ourselves. Our problems, our needs, our desires. Obsessed with what we don't have but want. Obsessed with all that is wrong, all that is unfair, and all that should be right. In all of that, we call ourselves disciples, followers of Jesus Christ. Does it shock us that Jesus doesn't?

Can we look at Luke 14:33 again? What is the Lord saying? What does it mean to give up "everything" for Him? Somehow, we think everything doesn't really mean everything. Certainly we're allowed to keep some things, particularly our right to ourselves, along with our right to complain and bemoan our lot. Our right to be blind to so much need around us as well as blind to His presence before us. Scripture says that in the last days we would be "Lovers of self instead of lovers of God." We certainly appear to know a lot more about loving ourselves than we do of loving Him, and loving those around us who are also loved by Him. People like James are everywhere, but we don't see them. How could we when we're so taken up with ourselves?

James has a disease of the body, but we have one of the soul, and we are crippled, and crippled even more than is James. We need healing. We need deliverance from ourselves. It is found in Jesus Christ, and in Him alone. He calls us to be His disciples, and that begins with a calling of ourselves, everything of ourselves, so that everything is in and of Him. That happens in one place only; the cross. When that happens, our testimony ceases to be all about us, and becomes all about Him. Has it happened in you, in me? There's a classic movie titled "Magnificent Obsession." For the believer in Christ, there can be only one such obsession, Christ Himself. Is He yours and mine. Or, does our magnificent obsession remain.....ourselves?

Blessings,
Pastor O