Every week in our assemblies, we try – Lord knows we try – to connect with Jesus and what He was going through in carrying out that greatest of sacrifices.
For more reasons than just that we are of fickle flesh, we can’t fully immerse our beings in the experience.
We can only, at best, imagine what our Savior was going through in the course of delivering us salvation.
Jesus was in a different place – a place He’d never known before – but a place into which He’d long known He’d have to forge.
It was the darkest of dark worlds, where His greatest of adversaries – Satan and death stood spoiling for battle.
And yet even before the combat, Jesus was in the most horrible of conditions – He was separated from God, His Father, because He was carrying upon His shoulders the full weight of the sins of the world.
I can’t even imagine our Lord’s pain.
But God knows I reap the reward of the sacrifice He made and the victory He achieved.
Yet sadly, I don’t always remember to honor what Jesus did for me.
And I know I’m not alone.
We’re all cut from the same weak flesh.
Without regard for why Jesus went through all of His suffering, I do bad things – sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly.
I don’t always come to worship with only Jesus’ great sacrifice on my mind and in my heart.
I do things in the world sometimes without consideration of what Jesus would do, but just because of what I think I want to do.
But all praise be to God, He knows me and He takes great patience with me.
And He sent me and us all the Holy Spirit to get us through.
But that’s not new to us Christians.
We all know that.
As I’ve written and said many times before, our Great Comforter is our Jesus on earth, who works with us – and guides us – and keeps us on track.
He is, too, a great part of the song I sing here today:
Satan has a favorite way of getting into my body’s aches and pains and through them trying to get me to rationalize forsaking the assembly.
I usually recognize the trick and with the Spirit’s help, I push through.
But recently, I awoke with suck numbness and immobility in my legs and feet that I was about to cry uncle.
I kept telling myself: “Just roll over and sleep this one off – nobody will blame you and if you get to feeling better, you can always go to evening service.”
The Holy Spirit uses a lot of psychology on me, I’m persuaded.
“Okay man, that’s alright,” a voice in my head soothed. “You can succumb this week and then again next week.
“And soon you can perfect your technique and feel justified in not going to another morning service.
“But what do you think would have happened to the whole world if Jesus had said: “I don’t want to drink this cup – it’s too painful?”
I got up and went to morning and evening services.
And I try harder each day of the week now to feel Jesus on the cross.
“And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5).
Ozzie Roberts – 9-16-18
Recent Comments