Since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.
Hebrews 4:14-16a NLT
Every Lent I ponder the temptations of Jesus. There, he was invited to satisfy his human appetites; for food, recognition and power. All three, over the years, have tried to draw me from my first desire to serve God. There is always that small yet persistent inner voice that justifies slight adjustments, so that I might apparently love God and myself at the same time.
I find it easy to look beyond myself to establish a frame of reference against which to measure my decisions. But the reference points I select owe little to God. I’m also consistently invited to consider God who is within me when making my decisions, and these may well fly in the face of the external landscape, together with its apparent demands, that surrounds me. This external landscape is particular and limited to its own context. I share common humanity with those born in war-torn Syria or poverty-stricken Zimbabwe, yet our contexts are light years apart. The only shared context we can access is the truth of God. Since God is Omniscient, Omnipresent and Omnipotent, our experience of God is the only trustworthy reference we share across the whole of humanity.
Evidence of our growing Christian maturity is revealed in the extent to which we make life decisions based upon this shared God context rather than our local, transient one. I may point to my local context to prove a point, yet it’s only relevant in as far as it measures up to God’s universal context. It’s what makes us world Christians; who recognise their citizenship is in heaven and God’s values alone, clearly revealed within scripture, are permanent. It’s one of the reasons Jesus was regarded with such suspicion by those who wielded power. He owed nothing to anyone, but everything to an unseen God.
QUESTION
Have you opened your eyes, ears and heart to the universal call of God to humanity?
PRAYER
Show me how to make the decisions you want me to make, Lord.
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