Scripture to Meditate on This Week

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. Romans 14:7-8

What a comforting and challenging bit of Scripture.

The challenge is that our lives are not to be about our desires and our wishes and our goals. We are to live for Jesus, His desires, His wishes and His goals.

The problem is that that is something that is easy to say but hard to do. So much of what we are about is tied to ourselves. Our families, our careers, what we do in our free time and lots more - these are things that are greatly defined by the goals that we have for ourselves, goals that we cherish.

What if Jesus took your life and dramatically changed all of it? What if He removed all your friendships? What if there was no more employment? What if there were no kids anymore? That would certainly hurt, but would it undo you? Would you have second thoughts about following Jesus? But think about it. Isn't this what happened to Job? And how did he respond? 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'

I think that it is to be our desire that, should those kinds of things happen to us, we would respond like Job. That is not something that we can work up to but rather something to ask the Father to grant.

There is comfort here also. It's in that last phrase, 'we are the Lord's'. That is, we belong to Him. There is comfort here because we know that He cares. He cares for those who are His and that in a way that He does not care about those who aren't His. And so, because this is true, we can cry out to Him when in need and be assured that He will care for us according to His wisdom and His love. And that's the only way we could respond well if we experienced what Job did. But because of this comfort from Jesus that is exactly what we could do.