Mark 10:17-27 • Better than Resolutions

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 Let's look at the Lord's Word together, Mark chapter 10. Mark 10 is what we'll be considering verses 17 through 27.



 As you're turning, let me ask you to consider this commentary by Christian commentator Mark Galley as he considers the value of New Year's resolutions.



 He writes this.



 The more I strive to be a good Christian, the more prayerful, patient, giving, sacrificial, whatever, the more I find myself anxious, irritated, guilty, resentful, and self-righteous.



 But when I simply accept that I am a sinner, really, then I find I pray more and more patient, more giving, more humble, and more loving.



 Well, let's see if that coheres with what Jesus says in this passage at Mark. Let's stand as we honor God's Word and think what might be better than our own resolutions to do God's will.



 Verse 17 says, "And as he," that is Jesus, "was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?



 Jesus said to him, why do you call me good?



 No one is good except God alone.



 You know the commandments, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.



 And he that is the man said to him, teacher, all these I have kept from my youth."



 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You like one thing.



 Go sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me."



 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said to them again, children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.



 And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, then who can be saved?



 Jesus looked at them and said, with man it is impossible, but not with God.



 For all things are possible with God.



 Let's pray together.



 Heavenly Father, thank you for the word that lights our way and for the promise of your son who has gone before us to prepare our hearts to serve you by cleansing us of sin. And as our faith is put in you, empowering us for the calling you give us in everyday life, would you help us to see that again? We're in a culture that uses this time to set new courses, at least for a little bit, in our New Year's resolutions.



 May our course be set by Christ for eternal reasons, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.



 Please be seated.



 Well, I think you should try a little harder.



 The words of a supervisor to a new hospital chaplain named Rich Hansen, who wrote about it later.



 And it was the third week in a row the supervisor had given that assessment. I think you need to try a little harder.



 The intern had gone to the hospital to take up the chaplaincy, thinking in the throes of life's difficulty in hospital rooms that the extremity of emotion and pain would fast start his understanding of what it meant to be a pastor. And so he was going to get a leg up on his colleagues by learning as a hospital intern what it meant.



 Instead, he said, I learned how out of my depth I truly was.



 I did not know what to say to people. I did not know what I would be facing at all. And the weekly feedback made it very clear. I was out of my depth. Rich, I think you should try harder.



 The intern wrote the first time he said it, I thought he must be kidding, I was shocked. No one had ever accused me of not trying hard enough at anything. I am conscientious by nature. I was trying hard. So I tried harder.



 And in the next meeting he said, Rich, you need to try harder.



 He wrote, my anxiety spiked. I had trusted this supervisor. He was the one person in the hospital I thought was actually sympathetic to my cause. But now even I was threatened by him because he was assuming that I had failed as well.



 The third week, the supervisor said it again, try harder, Rich.



 The intern said, I told him I am trying harder.



 Just forget it.



 I give up.



 Said the supervisor with a twinkle in his eye.



 That's what I've been waiting to hear.



 In the passage of Scripture that we have just read, there is no verse that says there's a twinkle in Jesus' eye.



 But if you don't see it, you won't understand the passage.



 Because what appears to be going on is just a you try harder. A man comes up and says, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus simply says, well, you know the rules.



 Just follow along.



 If that's all that Jesus would say, we'd be in deep trouble.



 It's not the end of Jesus' instruction nor the end of the lesson to us. If you just think what's in front of you in this passage, the things that are on the surface are fairly clear. First, there's just a great opportunity for an evangelism message. A man runs up to Jesus. I mean, Jesus isn't knocking on doors. He's ringing doorbells. He's not handing out pamphlets on the street. A man just comes up to him. I mean, talk about an open door.



 When the man only runs up to Jesus, he kneels down. He's humble. He addresses Jesus by rabbi, a respectful term. He's humble. He's respectful. He's open to hearing an answer. And then he asks a great question.



 What must I do to inherit eternal life?



 And in Jesus' response, everything seems to go amiss.



 I mean, after all, if you look at verse 19, when Jesus responds, he says, "You know the commandments," and he just begins to pile on a bunch of to-dos.



 Now be honest. If you just read that the first time, you think Jesus should have stayed in Sunday school a little bit longer. I mean, it just seems like, now wait a second. It's by grace you're saved.



 It's faith in what Christ has done, not faith. I mean, that's what we're taught over and over again in the Scriptures. And here is Jesus himself when he's asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" who responds by saying, "You know the commandments."



 Something's going on here.



 And we may discern what is going on here by thinking about how the account proceeds. What is really wrong?



 Well, the question itself is wrong.



 What must I do to inherit eternal life?



 I mean, it doesn't make sense. You don't do anything to inherit something. You inherit as a consequence of your birth and what somebody else has done, which by the way is going to be a wonderful spiritual lesson that we inherit the kingdom of God on the basis of a new birth and what somebody else has done. That is faith in what Christ has done for us. The young man doesn't get it though. You and I know he doesn't get it. He only asks the question, "What must I do?" And so Jesus answers him straight away. Now, is that really the question? Is the question, "What do you do to inherit eternal life?" Is that the question? What do you do to inherit eternal life? Well if that's the question, "What do you do?" then the answer is absolutely everything.



 Here's the law, you know it, do it. It's actually interesting that he offers nothing new. It's the situation we're often in in life itself as we go through churches, we go through various situations. Rarely do we tell people to do things as Christians they don't already know to do.



 Don't lie. "Oh, that's not in the Bible." The Bible doesn't really say don't lie, it doesn't say that. But you know it says that.



 Don't commit adultery. "Oh, the Bible doesn't say..." You know it says that.



 Rarely is there anything new. The trouble we have is not to know what to do. It's to have the motivation to do it. The question after all when the young man asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Not only does it make sense in terms of inheritance, it makes perfect sense however, in terms of our reflex reactions as humans. It's what I'm always asking. What do I do to get right with God? How do I fix this? How do I straighten things out?



 In fact, so much of our reflex is what do I do to make things right with God that often those who are in the church for a lifetime do not hear Jesus' actual answer to the question. What they think they hear us saying is just straighten up, behave, be better, and God will love you for that.



 About a decade ago, two authors, Melinda Norquist and Christian Smith, wrote a book called "Soul Searching" in which they were asking the question, "Why do so many teenagers leave the evangelical church as soon as they are able?"



 The answer is not something that we like, but they said it actually seems that so often what people learn in the church is actually giving them a wrong idea.



 And we think, "How does that occur?" They wrote, "The faith that often comes in this churchiosity culture that we are in is not based on any particular religion. It's actually a mashup of different aspects of our culture. Everything from pop culture, everything from Star Wars, Miley Cyrus and Oprah telling you the force is in you to get you what you want, combined with traditional religiosity telling you you be good, so God will be nice.



 And you add to that just some plain old American self-determination.



 You can be whatever you want as long as you try hard enough.



 And all that kind of mashes up into what they called moralistic, therapeutic deism.



 Moralistic, the goal of church is for you to behave.



 Therapeutic and feel good about yourself.



 And deism and God will help you if you're nice enough.



 Now I don't want to overstate it, but I do want you to recognize that as cerebral as that may sound, it may be very personal to a lot of people here. "Wait a second, what's wrong with that? If I'm nice, God's supposed to be nice. If I'm good enough, then God's supposed to be good to me. We barter in lots of life and that's just, isn't that the arrangement? Isn't that why you go to church? You sacrifice enough and then He'll be nice to you?" You actually see the faith that's being articulated in a lot of the Christmas songs that we sing in our culture. If this weren't about Santa, it would be about God for a lot of people in our church culture. Leon Womack sings, "Everybody's waiting for the man with the bag."



 He'll be here with the answer to your prayers that you've made all through the year.



 You'll get yours.



 If you've done everything you should, good.



 You'll get yours. If you've done everything that you should, good. Isn't that the contract? You do what you should and then God will give you what you need as you determine your needs. God will give you what you want because you've become good enough. Such religiosity is basically about serving the vending machine in the sky. You put in enough nice nickels, not the naughty ones, but the nice nickels, and then you get what you want.



 Why does this all backfire? Not just on the teens, by the way, but for anybody who kind of gets old enough not to feel the compulsion of going to church just because it's what their parents or their culture or peers expect of them. Why does all that vending machine God stuff try harder and then you'll get what God's supposed to give you? Why does that not work?



 Well, first it does not work because all of us, teens or adults, resent emotional blackmail.



 As long as you're good enough, I'll love you, care for you, like you, bless you. We all resent the notion that love is going to be based on satisfactory behavior. Oh yeah, we can be in a church that talks a lot about the golden rule.



 But if all we talk about the golden rule is you need to do more of that, then we have to say, "All right, how much gold do I have to manufacture before God's going to be happy?"



 And ultimately we begin to resent the God who does not love us until we have satisfied Him. It's not just that we result relational blackmail. We all discover that life is harder than our try-harders.



 You can try really, really hard. And it does not guarantee the life of ease that so often we want to promise in the church.



 The good really do die young.



 Rain falls on the good and the evil.



 Holy people get hurt just like the Bible says.



 I struggle with that. I struggle even to say it because I did this in my notes. I thought about the teens to whom I administered in life that I have seen at one point on fire for the Lord.



 And then as they got further into their adulthood walking away from the Lord.



 And I just listed their names in my notes here to think I wanted to see their faces, at least in my mind's eye, and to grieve and say, "Vicky, Val, Jan Marie, Diane, John, Todd, Tom. What did I say to you that you thought that what religion was, was you just plugging enough nickels into God that He would provide for you whatever you wanted? That this Christian walk was not about giving yourself to God, but about God just giving you what you wanted. Not trusting His guidance, not trusting His Word, but just doing what you wanted. And He was supposed to somehow sanctify it and bless it and give you what you wanted. And was it what I said?



 Was it how I presented the gospel?



 Was I the one who was just saying, "You just be nice and not naughty and Jesus like Santa will give you everything you want under your Christmas tree or your career path?"



 Because if that's what I even implied, I repent of it and tell you I am sorry and tell you it's not even what Jesus taught.



 I mean if we consider what Jesus taught, He did not say, "You'll get yours if you do what you should good."



 He said, "When you have done everything that you should, you are still an unworthy servant because the relationship with Christ is not based upon what you do. It is based upon faith in what Christ has done.



 And so when I recognize that, I'm not saying I've got to plug in enough nickels of good behavior that God's going to be nice to me. I say, "God sent His Son to the cross to pay everything that was needed." And my life is now lived in response to that goodness and in faith that the path that He will put before me in a fallen world, though it may be difficult, though it may be hard, is the path that a Father who loves me in heaven is designed for me to walk with my Savior.



 And when I walk that path, He will go with me.



 We eventually discover that that is the faith that Jesus promised, not that we could just ask Him to give us whatever we wanted.



 He is not promising good stuff based on our good behavior. He is promising Himself based upon His grace for whatever we have to face in a fallen world.



 The same hospital intern that became a pastor before learning a lot of the gospel himself later wrote these words.



 What a difference it makes to believe in a God whose love is not conditional upon our behavior.



 For years, He said, I wooed people with practical answers to felt needs before I realized I was not helping them with their basic need, which was to know the Lord.



 The pressure the pastor felt to have all the practical answers actually stifles wholesome faith. I was peddling a problem-solving God, a God without earthly reality or eternity in view, a golden calf who was there to give you what you think you need if you'll just do enough to please.



 It's easy to sell that God.



 That God just doesn't work in the real world.



 And it's that religion of try harder that Jesus is actually undermining in this passage. Not on the surface of things, but if you go down deep, what's He actually saying to this young man?



 He begins, if you will, to crush Him, to squeeze out of Him this self-reliance, this try-hardness in order to make Him understand truly what faith would be should He grasp it. And the way that He does that in this great opportunity for evangelism is first by giving this notion of a great obligation that virtually nobody can fulfill.



 If you think of how great is the obligation, you'll look at verse 19. Jesus just says, "You know the commandments. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal," and He lists what's usually called the second table of the law, all those aspects of the Ten Commandments that deal with human's responsibilities to humans horizontally. And Jesus just lists them.



 But you won't understand His motive if you begin to say the answer to the question before you hear Jesus' answer to the greeting.



 The first thing the young man says when he comes to Jesus is, "Good teacher." Question comes next. What must I do to inherit eternal life?



 How does Jesus respond to the greeting?



 "Good teacher"? What does Jesus say? Why do you call me good?



 Only God is good. Would you say that with me? Only God is good. Only God is good. Now that statement should just kind of ring in the air as this conversation continues. Only God is good.



 You know the commandments.



 Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, honor your father and mother.



 What does the young man say at the end of the list of commandments?



 All these what?



 I have kept since I was a boy. Now do you still hear it? Only God is good. What does the young man say about himself three seconds later?



 "Me too!



 I'm good too!" In which case he gives himself the status and the stature of God. You know what just got thrown out the window?



 The first table of the law.



 All those commandments that deal with putting God before all other. You shall have no other gods. You shall honor no other gods. You shall make God first. He is the only true God. All those commandments, they just get thrown out the window because the young man has given himself godly status.



 I'm as good as God. And so now you have to say, "How is Jesus going to deal with this God man standing in front of him?"



 He has to crush him again.



 You know what should have happened when all the commandments are listed.



 Do not commit adultery, which if you go back to the Sermon on the Mount means don't even have any moral thoughts.



 Do not kill, which means also do not hurt other people with bad names that you call them.



 Or take away their reputation by gossip or unkind things said about them. I mean these commandments should just crush this man, but he's not crushed.



 Instead he's given himself the status of God, so Jesus now tries to crush the idolatry out of him. He says words that candidly distress us as much as they distressed the disciples. Verse 21, "Jesus looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing."



 By the way, this one thing is no little thing.



 This one little thing. "You lack one thing.



 Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me." Now the instruction is clear.



 What's not as clear is the intention.



 What we do often in our culture is we hear these words about sell everything you have and give to the poor, and we say, "Is that a universal rule?



 Is that something that we're being called to do right now? Actually, I think you should, no I don't.



 And you know I think not. Listen, this would not have made sense if the idolatry were not already on the stage. Okay, already the man has said, "I'm as good as God." And that means God's priorities are secondary to mine.



 As a consequence, Jesus says, "You need to understand God will take second place to nothing." And so he takes what the man values the most, apparently his money because he appears to be rich, and he says, "You need to give that away for God's purposes." Now the reason I'm saying it that way is we tend to think of idolatry as something about a wooden or stone image in a hut in a jungle somewhere. But more frequently in the Bible, idols are good things that take the place of God, that allow us to kind of push God aside, to marginalize God for a little bit while we pursue this good thing. And you think of all the good things that can become idols in our lives. I'm going to marginalize God, push Him on the shelf for a while while I pursue this in the meantime. And it could be food, sex, occupational accomplishment, personal approval, sports, recreation, body image, or particularly alluring money.



 That's what Jesus presses on in this one account, right? It's harder for a rich man to enter heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Now it's not saying that all riches are wrong. I mean, Jesus blessed Solomon in the Old Testament with riches, others, Job had riches. Riches in themselves are not wrong unless they have begun to promise you that they will fulfill you without God.



 And so you marginalize God in order to pursue those things even for just a while. And what Jesus is teaching is that anything that promises fulfillment without following Christ is ultimately going to enslave you and bring you no fulfillment at all.



 You know what the evidence of that in this passage is, that the idolatry is ultimately unfulfilling, is that this young man went away from this conversation sad even though he still has all his money.



 He still got it. And yet he is sad. He doesn't have enough. He's enslaved to the pursuit of one more thing. I need to have a little bit more. And all that he's had is not satisfying even though by the world's standards he's rich. Now if that doesn't seem to apply to you, remember that by our world's standards virtually everyone in this room is rich.



 But not everyone in this room is satisfied.



 And so God is saying to you and to me in light of the spiritual needs that are on display here, what is beneath the surface of this passage is not just God trying to crush self-sustaining arrogance out of one man. It's God revealing to all of us that our self-sufficiency ultimately becomes slavery. That if what I'm trying to do is just make my way, accumulate enough, have this relationship, have that person, have this job, and that will make me happy.



 If that becomes more important than Christ, he will ultimately enslave you.



 And Jesus, because He loved the young man, is taking Him down a whole different path.



 If you recognize that there is a great opportunity and then a great obligation that's meant to actually crush self-sufficiency and idolatry out of this man, you begin to be understanding what the great objective of this conversation is.



 Three that I want to list for you. What are the objectives of Jesus in this conversation? It's that the young man and we would understand only God is good.



 If you say that, that means you are not.



 And that means it's a confession.



 I'm not as good as I should be as I consider the commandments of God in all their perfection, in all of their goodness.



 I have not lived what God requires of me.



 I can perhaps put on a good show for a while. I can compare myself to others and believe I'm okay. But the reality is I do not live with the perfection that a holy God requires. I begin the path that Jesus designed by simply saying, "Only God is good, and I'm not."



 The second thing that Jesus is teaching here, of course, is that only God is God.



 And you are not, nor is this young man. As much as he gives himself the stature and the status of God, if he begins to only do what he can do in his own strength and power, he will ultimately be enslaved by the very things he is seeking. And God is saying to you and to me that he has the power to overcome that. That he, by being honored above all things, actually is freeing us from the slavery, the stories that we would pursue in our own lives. That when we have honored God above all things, that the things that would capture our heart, capture our attention, capture our activities, capture our energies, they actually begin to lose their power in our lives.



 I've studied a lot the writings of Tim Keller, the New York City pastor, who says that one of the things that young people struggle with these days, who have raised in a church that say the goal of the church is to help young people behave, is to actually say we don't believe that anymore.



 I mean, you know, you're not nice if you live with somebody, not your husband or wife. Well, who says so? I don't feel any guilt for that. I don't feel any shame for that. And the attempts of the church to shame people into obedience just don't work anymore in our culture.



 Instead what Jesus is doing here is more typical of what works in our culture today when you say to young people, don't you recognize that to pursue any of these things apart from Christ ultimately is going to enslave you, that you become your happiness, your fulfillment tied to that person and their opinion of you or their sexual relationship with you or this job or that opportunity or this respect or that magazine article, whatever it is, you're not happy if you don't have it.



 And as a consequence, it has you. It controls you. And Jesus is saying, but when you put God above all those things, when his honor is your first intention, then that honor makes all those other idols slaves to him, not you a slave to them.



 God is teaching not only that only God is good and only God is God. Ultimately what Jesus is teaching here is that only grace will do to get us out of the crushing



 of seeking self-sufficiency.



 What is Jesus doing to help this young man?



 I don't want you to miss where this account goes. You may remember that in terms of Jesus actually believing that goodness is going to get us out of our situation, verse 17 begins this way. As Jesus was setting out on his journey, where's he going?



 If you look in the same passage down at verse 32, you'll see.



 They were on the road going up to Jerusalem saying, "We are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of Man said Jesus will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles and they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him and after three days he will rise."



 Did Jesus really believe that just keeping the commandments would be the answer to the problems?



 No, he's on the way to die and to rise in resurrection. Jesus is saying to this young man, "The commandments should crush you. Your idolatry will enslave you. Come follow me and you will see a pardon being provided for your sin and you will see in resurrection the power for a life that is freed from the slavery's to idolatry's that you intend.



 I will give you something different. New life, not just a new year but a new eternity by what God is promising in his Son here. He is the one providing the righteousness the man could not provide for himself unless he lies or is ignorant or callous to what the commandments are." Jesus is saying, "I will make the way." It is not just the pardon is there. You hear the distress in the disciples? Oh no, if even the wealthy people, and remember in much of Jewish society the fact that you had wealth meant that you were a good person and if you were poor it meant you were being punished for being a bad person. So if Jesus is saying even the wealthy are going to have trouble getting to heaven, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven that people are saying to the disciples, "Well, who's got any hope then?" I mean if even the wealthy that, you know, by their very wealth are showing they have the favor of God, if even they have trouble getting into heaven, how's anybody else going to be saved? And Jesus at the end of verse 27 says, "With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God."



 If the young man were to follow Him, He'll go to a cross and He'll see there's my sin being sacrificed for, there's provision, forgiveness, pardon being provided. But I've still got to live this life. I've still got these commands that might crush me. How am I going to live for God once my sin is pardoned? And Jesus says, "With God all things are possible.



 As He has risen, He knows what will happen. He'll tell His disciples, "My spirit will indwell you, and greater is He that's in you than He that's in the world." The world doesn't have this hope. It says I'm a victim of my behavior or my circumstances or my genetics. And we as believers say, "No, we hold to the gospel. Greater is He that's in you than He that's in the world." You are not just a victim of circumstance, a victim of genetics. God has given His Holy Spirit to change your desires, to change your heart, to change your patterns. And the same God that sent His Son to provide pardon for your sin is providing power by His Holy Spirit. So the things that do tempt us, the idolatries in our life, Jesus is saying, "I can provide power for you. With God this is possible. New life, new hope, new habits, new ways, new patterns. I'm not saying it's without struggle. I am saying tomorrow does not have to be like yesterday.



 Real change is possible. Hope is here because with God all things are possible."



 If you believe that, if you believe that you can be pardoned for the past and you can have power for the present, then what's going to make you act in such a way that you would follow after Jesus as He calls this man and all of us to?



 For me the clear answer is in verse 21.



 To me one of the most personally favorite verses of all Scripture, just the first portion. And Jesus looking at Him loved Him.



 I love that.



 Here's this young man. He's got the wealth of the world and the arrogance of the world and gives Himself the status of God. And Jesus looking at Him loved Him.



 And I think you and I are supposed to see that twinkling in the eye of Jesus right then, that sparkle of grace in the moment. Say Jesus has every reason to slam, to walk away, to reject and He looks at Him and loves Him. And I need that awareness in my own heart to recognize that God is saying to you and to me that once you've been pardoned and now that you know power is yours, what's going to make you act upon the power to live the life that God is calling you to? It is to know how deeply loved you are. You will act upon what you most love to and we love because He first loved us.



 Here's the young man deserving no love at all and Jesus loves Him and it's that love that's meant to turn His heart and turn Him around and ultimately empower the obedience you and I are called to. It's just mistaken that in the church we think that obedience is not doing the things we hate with extraordinary willpower, whereas biblical obedience is doing precisely what we love with extraordinary satisfaction.



 And I love doing what Christ calls me to do when He is my first love.



 It's this simple but profound reality that when we act in love upon the pardon and the power that God has given us, that we are more enabled, desiring to live for God than anything else we could or would ever do.



 New Year's resolutions?



 Well some of them will stick but most won't.



 What we want is something that's not so ephemeral, not so fragile.



 What would actually make us live the life we wanted to live?



 Do you remember two weeks ago here it was 20 degrees below zero wind chill at this time we're now meeting.



 And in this past week it's 50 degrees out there.



 We go from deep chill to warmth. And it's that time of year, right, that we have the freeze thaw cycle. And for lots of us from our teens well into our adulthoods we recognize the pattern. We're here as speaker, we'll go to summer camp, we'll go to a conference, we'll get some people around us and we're on fire for the Lord and then the winter storms come along and we grow cold again.



 What is it that would keep us from just being on fire to frozen and break the cycle with a glowing warmth that was consistent in our hearts and through our lives?



 We had a wonderful New Year's opportunity in our family. We had all our kids, all their spouses, and all our grandkids under one roof for the first time ever right now.



 And I think of all that my wife did to get ready for that.



 Shopping for Christmas presents, wrapping Christmas presents, shopping for the groceries, preparing the groceries, preparing special meals, organizing the menus, organizing the schedule.



 On the eve of it all, taking an 18-hour round trip with me, drive to my mom's house because it was the only window that we had to see my mother, coming back, arranging the rooms, decorating the house, arranging the bedrooms.



 You know what? I don't think anybody forced her to do that.



 And I'm pretty sure nobody could have stopped her from doing all that.



 And I'm sure that there's something about resolve and willpower and feeling guilty if you don't do it. All that worked its way in there.



 But do you know what's deep down the great motivation?



 It is profound love that's more powerful than anything else to answer the calling that God gives her and gives you. Jesus looked at him and loved him.



 And Jesus looks at you and loves you.



 And when you know that, it's the warm glow of a perpetual heart for the priorities of Jesus.



 Father, so work your grace and there are hearts we pray that we who long to serve you might just not be fired and frozen, cold and hot, but warmed by the glow of your grace to live for you every day, hard days, easy days, cold days, warm days, winter days, summer days, still with my Jesus.



 Start my understanding of him that gives me power for you, I pray.



 In Jesus name, amen.