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Weekly Reminder...
The Weekly Reminder is an informative tool to help people who read it consider what the man of God has said. This weekend’s articles are based on what was heard on June 27 & 28, 2009 in the Westbury assembly.written by Br. Samuel Philogene
“Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee, that he may dwell in Thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple” (Psalms 65:4).
If it would be asked who loves Jesus? Who wants to serve Him? Who wants to follow Him? Thousands of thousands would easily say yes, but when it comes to know what it takes to follow Jesus, to be His disciple, very few would still say, “Yes, I want to follow the Lord”. It takes a lot to follow God; we can be in church for many years, involved in every activity in the church but have not yet followed God. Joshua knew what it took to serve God and as a man of God he knew that the people couldn’t serve the Lord because their hearts were far from God. He said to them, “Ye cannot serve the LORD: for He is a holy God; He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins” (Joshua 24:19).
That is what is happening today we take the service of the Lord lightly, we think you can serve God and become Jesus’ disciples but Br. Antoine told us that it is not that easy. To serve God we must leave everything behind even our life should not be more important than the work of the Lord. Paul understood that in his last days; even though he knew that death was ahead he went to Jerusalem because for him accomplishing the will of God was better than anything else (Acts 20:22-24). We can’t serve God with our emotions or by what we feel is right but we have to serve God based on what God wants from us. Br. Antoine showed us who can really follow Christ and who can be His disciple.
Jesus says in Luke 16:24, “ If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple”. After hearing those words many of those who said they were willing to follow Jesus didn’t have the same disposition to do so. Most of the time after a message if the man of God would ask who still want to stay in the church, many would flee. If the choice was given to go back to the world many would leave the church to go back to the world just because they didn’t have a true desire to follow Christ or they didn’t realize what it takes to follow Christ. We can see this in the example of Gideon and his army going to the battle; Gideon thought that all his soldiers were willing to fight but all were not ready for battle. Before the battle he saw his army go from 32,000 to 300 men willing and ready to go to war. In Judges 7, you can see when the first choice was given to give up the battle 22,000 went back, “‘Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead’. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand” (v 3).
We are called to hate our own selves to be Jesus’ disciples; how can we do that? We have to consider the service of the Lord greater than anything, when it comes to choosing between God and things that are necessary for us to live like: a job, a car, a house the word of God constrains us to choose God. When we don’t do it like that we can easily miss church service to put in overtime hours at the job, but hating ourselves for God sake will cause us to even give up a job if it doesn’t allow us to come to church. Usually, emotionally we say that we want to serve God but we ignore the sacrifices that come with it. A Scribe came to Jesus saying, “Master, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay His head” (Matthew 8:19-20). Jesus just wanted to tell him that what you think that following Me is is not so easy. But to another one that Jesus Himself called, when he told Jesus, “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father”. Jesus said unto him, “Follow Me; and let the dead bury their dead” (v 21-22).
This scripture bring us to what Br. Antoine emphasized on Sunday, we didn’t choose to serve God (John 15:16), no one can choose God but we’ve been called by God in Jesus (Ephesians 1:4-7). So when Jesus calls somebody He gives him direction, Jesus leads the way. He decides for His chosen; just like this man who Jesus called was willing to first go back and bury his father before following Christ. But Jesus advised him to follow Him instead, he didn’t let him go. We are chosen by God to do His good pleasure (2 Thessalonians 1:11), so we can’t live for our own selves but we have to live in a way that please God the One who has called us (Ephesians 4:1). God chose Israel as His people but Israel had to be holy, pure like God (Deuteronomy 14:2). We are calling to be holy like our Father which is in heaven (1 Peter 1:15). We need God more than ever before to help us really follow Him so that we do not go astray when we think we are in Jesus.
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