Posted on December 14, 2022 by Elizabeth Welte in Freedom Fighters
“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” – 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NKJV)
Sometimes I stress when life gets demanding, but on the flip side, I can be demanding and cause people stress. Green lights demand that we go (even though a car horn seems to do better), while red lights demand that we STOP!! Polictians demand that we vote a certain way while they demand that we pay our fair share. We go to God in prayer and demand our daily goodies while God demands that we surrender those daily goodies for something better and yet we still demand our daily goodies. Oh, then we’ll stress when we don’t get those daily goodies and then think we’ll redeem that loss by turning to our brothers/sisters in Christ and make demands upon them.
‘Tis a vicious cycle to be demanding, isn’t it? I use to demand obedient children but then God demanded that I check my own obedience before I make such a demand (and for all of you taking notes, run yourself through Romans 7: 14-24 and see how you do). Even the sound of the word can have two different inflections that can bring either a comfort or an un-comfort to its listener. In conclusion then, the duality of the word, demanding, either to be the adjective of a task or the adjective of a person, funnels itself into our everyday comings and goings like no other.
Guess this may be the reasoning behind the excuse that the demands of life can interfere with our prayer life. Instead of us clinging to a dependency of divine vertical connection, that directly comes from prayer, we’ll slither through the traffic of worldly demands along the horizontal highways and be in danger of crashing and burning. What would Jesus do? Well, He would probably have a sit down with us…
“In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.” — Matthew 6:9-10
Jesus saw it a needful thing to show us what must always be the matter and the method of our praying. Matthew 6:5 tells us that He ain’t hearing those who demand attention when they making their requests known. Matthew 6:6 gives us a location and Matthew 6:7 tells us that we need to make our words count when we get there, but mind your word count. Matthew 6:8 gives us an assurance that God already knows anyway. Acknowledgement comes by the time we get to Matthew 6:9 and who knows what the next thing is? I’ll give a hint, it’s in Matthew 6:10. Well, if you guessed surrender you know your stuff and deserve (hmm, well since we all deserve a swim in the lake of fire I’ll just stop here and move on to the next thought). Anyway…
Jesus modeled what it is to look like when one has their life surrendered to God. “Your will be done on earth and it is in heaven” is about as surrendered as Jesus could get. He did nothing without understanding the demands of the Father first and the one thing the Father demanded is that sin be paid for. So, if you still know your stuff then you’re familiar with Romans 6:23 then you’re also familiar that Jesus paid your sin debt and now you get eternal life in Him. But there is a hitch to that. In order to keep the account updated you’re gonna have to depend on Him to help you and because He wants you to have that kinda dependency, you’re gonna have to be obediently surrendered…that’s the demand, maybe a better word is mandate from El Elyon.
When the angel of the Lord appeared and announced, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people” (Luke 2:10b) that angel announced the greatest surrender story ever. A Savior for all people, who wants you to be dependent on Him, who wants you to surrender your demands for your daily goodies, had come to live a life committed to fulfill the mission that reconciles through resurrection and redirects those who are lost back into a sense of true belonging. If Jesus didn’t live in the same surrender that He calls us to, then its all nothing but demands to try and better people with no hope of much for our obedience.
Alistair Begg once wrote, “To pray is an admission and expression of dependence”, how dependent are you to the demand of prayerful, surrendered obedience? I hope that, like me, you’re finding yourself vertical expressing your dependency on “The All-Sufficient One” and not on the lap of St. Nick. St. Nick doesn’t really listen to you, but God does. Amen?
Written by Chris Hughes: Chris is a child of El Elyon, a son, husband, a father, has an education in Biblical doctrine and is a graduate of The Colony of Mercy. He has been a Freedom Fighter contributor since 2008. You can email him at cphughes515@verizon.net.
Think About This: “Without Jesus willingly living the prayer that He taught all of us to pray, the angels would have nothing to sing about, those tombs would’ve never opened, sin and death would have never been conquered, and we would be the dead walking.” — Paul David Tripp
The Daily Bible Reading: Amos 1-3; Revelation 5 You can download our 2022 Daily Bible Reading Plan by clicking here.
This Week’s Verse to Memorize: “It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the Lord commanded the blessing— Life forevermore.” Psalm 133:3
Consider a retreat at America’s Keswick retreat center.
