Pastor John,
This evening, while I was getting ready for our 7 o’clock meeting, I asked Jesus if He would give me something that I could share tonight – a testimony. I then considered many of the things that God has done for me in my life, some things that I feel certain I have never shared, or if I did testify to them, it has been so long that it has all but been forgotten. I wanted to add to the pot, one of the peas that has been given to me. At the same time, I wanted whatever it is that I said, if anything, to be what Jesus is saying, now; I wanted it to be alive! Not just reminiscent of something that was once living. It is just as you told us in Louisville many years ago, “The truth isn’t the truth if it isn’t what Jesus is doing right now.” We need Jesus in the present tense, not where He was.
I continued getting ready for the meeting and forgot that I had asked Jesus for anything. Then, while crossing the kitchen floor, I stopped as the Lord began communicating to me. He did not remind me of a time in which he blessed me and I failed to tell about it, nor did he stir up something that was long overdue to be told, again. But he did tell me this, and I want to share it.
The best that we can ever do for God, is to just do what He tells us.
There is nothing that we have, that He did not give us first. There is nothing that we can add to Him, and there is no way that we can improve upon his eternal situation. We will never have an idea that is better than His own.
What can we begin to offer the One who created and controls, everything?
In the book of Isaiah, the Lord spoke through the prophet, regarding the day when “sacrificing a lamb would be like cutting off a dog’s neck.” That is because, while it is true that Israel had obeyed the Lord in worshipping Him with these kinds of sacrifices in the past, Israel had since failed to obey God in all other things. And the sacrifices themselves had no value at all to God. That lamb was never of any more value to Him than the dog that he compared it to.
What did make this, or any other animal sacrifice, of any value was that the Lord was willing to accept it. The sacrifice had been sanctified by God’s willingness to receive it. That was its only value, ever. And in response to Israel’s disobedience, the Lord declared that He was no longer willing to accept it.
It is the same today. Whatever God will condescend to accept from us humans, that is the very best that we can ever give to Him. We cannot improve upon that, and it is arrogant to try.
Jerry
===========
Hi Jerry.
I guess that is why, as a man told me in my Old Testament class many years ago, “God doesn’t tell us to do the best we can; He tells us to obey Him.”
Pastor John