Which Way?
Saturday 30th August
There is a story about two deer hunters who bagged the biggest buck they had ever seen. They were struggling as they tried to drag the huge animal by its rear feet back to the road across rugged terrain. Another hunter observed their difficulty and advised them that they could pull the deer much easier if they would grab the deer by its antlers and pull it head first instead of feet first. They thanked their advisor and began to pull it by the head as he suggested. The one hunter exclaimed happily, ”It really is a lot easier to pull it this way.” The other hunter shook his head and replied, ”Yes, but we are getting further away from the car all the time.”
It is important to know in what direction we are going. Some people, like our deer hunters can use all their energy doing the right thing to go in the wrong direction. If we don’t know where we are going, then the method of locomotion is relatively unimportant.
As brethren and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ we ought to be moving in the direction of the Kingdom. Whatever we do, whatever we think, whatever we plan, we should always be asking the question. ”Is this taking me closer to my goal of the Kingdom or away from it?” We may laugh at the hunters as they struggle with their trophy as they got further and further from their goal, but it is no laughing matter if we struggle through life getting further and further away from the one important thing in our life, a place in God’s soon coming Kingdom.
Many times a person has been promoted and transferred into isolation only to fall away from the truth as a result. Sometimes when trouble arises in an ecclesia some decide to stay away. There have been instances when someone bought a boat or a plane or some other possession, maybe a cottage at the shore or in the mountains, and soon found that they were getting further and further away from their goal of a place in the Kingdom.
If we really do want to be in the Kingdom of God more than anything else in all the world, will we allow anything or anybody to come between us and our goal? Paul did not think so. He said, ”I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Paul was determined that nothing would come between him and ”the love of God.” Is anything coming between us and the love of God? The answer is in our dedication to our number one goal in life, a place in God’s Kingdom. If this really is our goal then we will not allow any of these things to take us from it. Oh, it does not mean that we cannot have a promotion, or a cottage, but they will not detract us from our goal. When the kingdom is everything to us, we will either use the temporal things to our advantage or we will get rid of them. When trouble comes (not if) we will work harder and pray for those who are opposing us. If we should admit that a hypocrite is coming between us and God, then we are admitting that the hypocrite is closer to God than we are. We will not go away from God just because there is strife. Jesus could have boycotted his last meal with his apostles because one was attending who was a thief and a betrayer and another was a liar and swore.
Let us measure everything we do to see if it is helping us get closer to our goal of the Kingdom. If it is not, then are we going to let it (whatever it is) separate us from the love of God? No matter how great or how awful the ”it” is, if it separates us from the love of God, then it is too high a price to pay. Paul gave the answer to his own question of ”Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” by saying, ”If God be for us, who can be against us?” The real answer is ”nothing” but we sometimes let ”something” change our direction as the foolish hunters did. Let us be persuaded, as Paul was, that nothing will ”separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”