January 3
“At the cross of Calvary, love and selfishness stood face to face. Here was their crowning manifestation. Christ had lived only to comfort and bless, and in putting Him to death, Satan manifested the malignity of his hatred against God. He made it evident that the real purpose of his rebellion was to dethrone God, and to destroy Him through whom the love of God was shown.”
Desire of Ages, page 57 from the chapter, 'The Dedication'
The opposite of love is not hate – but selfishness. We probably realised that but may not realise the impact of the self-centred life on our own lives.
The person who is self-centred needs to have things done their way and may well need to be in control – of everything around them. Were it not for our currently frail human bodies we might not feel the effects of selfishness and self-centredness.
The effects of selfishness can be felt as stress simply because things do not easily come under our control. We may want a person to do something in a particular way but they resist. The self-centred person has to exert effort of some kind to enforce their will. Stress is the result.
I do get the feeling that Jesus found a different way of coping with life. Instead of enforcing his own will on people He simply asks us to slip into following the will of His Father and allowing that will to be our own will. The idea is to be happy with God’s will.
Jesus then expressed this will in the form of love – by setting out to do things for others rather than to aim to please himself.
One of the Bible texts I had to learn – and chose to remember - is this, from the Gospel of Mark – “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45
Avoid stress, give a little of the love of God to someone today.
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Housekeeping details for you
The point of this short blog will become clear if you decide to use this reading in the way we intend it. Netherfield Seventh-day Adventist Church believes in healthy churches. You can see what that means if you head to the relevant Healthy Churches page of the website. We also want other churches to be healthy. That means you can join in our campaign to create healthy churches, with healthy people serving the people in those churches.
A healthy church is one where Jesus comes first. A healthy church is one where the people work together to put Jesus first. One thing we are doing is to join people together to spread that news. I would like you to look at our prayer partners page. This will explain how we want you to use this short devotional. Very basically we want you to find a like-minded Christian friend who you will join with to : choose to pray together every day, decide together on a way to serve other people together, to help them grow as Christians - and to invite the Holy Spirit into your life every day. This blog that you will receive every day simply gives a common spiritual purpose. If you are a newcomer and want to join the blog with this object in mind click here
