Living in relationship with God is a topic that I have examined
in previous articles, and today, I want to probe it further. This is one of the
amazing aspects of Christianity – that God is King and Lord and Savior and
Judge, and yet, he calls us friends (John 15:15). He is not a God that we
worship from afar; he is a God we draw near to and with whom we walk in
relationship. He wants our hearts, but so often we settle for less.
I have been reading a book recently by Jerrad Lopes called
Dad Tired and Loving It. In it he gives an example from marriage. He asks us to
suppose a man buys a guide on how to be a good husband and starts to do the
things listed in checklist fashion. The wife will be pleased with what he is doing
but suppose she asks why he is doing these things and he responds with,
“Because this book told me to.” This answer reveals his heart. His wife does
not have his heart. There is a hollowness and a distance. His actions are not
motivated by a desire to draw closer to his wife in love, but something else. Perhaps
a desire to look like a good husband or to feel good because he is doing the
things that good husbands do. This is how we as humans can be with God. He
wants our hearts, but so often we settle for less.
To dive into this further, let us look once again at the
story of the rich young man that came to talk with Jesus. I have looked at this
section in previous posts, but one of the things I love about Scripture is that
it can always be mined further. Each text is rich with meaning. The question
this rich young man poses to Jesus is, “what must I do to inherit eternal
life?” (Mark 10:17). In essence, he is asking, “How do I check the not going to
hell box?” Jesus starts to list out the commandments. The man confirms he has
been following them all. Then Jesus, knowing this man’s heart, as he knows all
our hearts, gave the man a check box he could not check. “‘Go, sell everything
you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come,
follow me.’ At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great
wealth” (Mark 10:21-22).
We are all like this man in some way. We all have things
that we treasure. Maybe it’s money and possessions as it was for this man or
perhaps it’s prestige or comfort or being able to do as we wish. We are also
like him in another way in that most of us can check a lot of boxes. We can do
good deeds. But God knows something. He knows that these things can never
satisfy. Satisfaction is only found in him.
In Matthew 6:19, Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves
treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and
steal.” Everything we have could be taken away in a moment. Perhaps even more
startling though is that, in the long run, we are guaranteed to have everything
on this earth taken from us – we will die. Yet we live in ignorance of this
because the other road is easier: the road of money, the road of comfort, the
road of doing what we want, and yet hoping that our good deeds sprinkled along
the way will be enough to appease God. As Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow
gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and
many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to
life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13, 14).
What is this narrow road? It is not narrow because God makes
it narrow. It is narrow because we make is narrow. We try to cling to what we
have here on earth. We believe the lie that has been told since ancient days. We
believe that we are better off without God, that the things here on earth are
more important than him. All the while, Jesus stands with open arms. He loves
us. He wants to be in relationship with us forever. His heart can be seen so
clearly in this verse, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and
stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing”
(Matthew 23:37). He wants to gather us. Instead, we walk away sad because we
think what he offers is too difficult. We opt instead for the things of this
earth which will rust, which will fade, which will be stolen, which will
ultimately be taken from us at death.
While we opt for the lie of this world being able to satisfy,
we miss what is really there for us. Listen to what Jesus said to the young
man, “and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Not only do
we get “treasure in heaven” which Jesus points out is a treasure “where moths
and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal”, we get
Jesus – God himself. He wants to be with us and walk with us each and every
day. Not just in heaven, but on earth now. He wants our hearts, not empty
deeds. So, will we cling to the things of this world and walk away from Jesus
sad now only to be left eternally sad or will we step into life with him, which
will never disappoint? As Jesus makes clear, “No one can serve two masters”
(Matthew 6:24). Who is our master? Is it money, possessions, ourselves,
something else, or is it Jesus? At the end, the former will leave us wondering,
“have I done enough.” The latter will leave us saying, “I know that my Savior
has done enough because I know him and he has shown me so.”
