DAILY DEVOTIONAL – April 15, 2020
“Yes, Lord!“
Prayer: Almighty God, You have given us Your Word so that it may go well with us. By Your grace given to us in Jesus, help us to trust in You and joyfully obey Your Word. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Scripture: Luke 6:46-49
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? 47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like:48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.”
Devotional – “Yes, Lord.”
When I was going through college I worked for a company called Life Alert; you know, the “Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” company. I worked first as a sales representative and then as the manager of a sales team. One of the responsibilities I had was monitoring phone calls to ensure proper procedures were being followed and to help train the sales representatives.
I’ll never forget one phone call I listened in on. Life Alert had a policy that if you sold a certain amount of units, you got to give one unit away for free to the customer of your choosing. This may not sound like a typical incentive program for sales people, and it wasn’t, but there was no person that was successful at selling life saving home security systems that didn’t receive honest gratification from helping people. There were many times I received phone calls and didn’t have to sell anything, the calling customer had their credit card in hand and was already sold the merits of having the system because of some horrible incident that happened to them; a time where they really needed it but didn’t have it. There were also plenty of calls I made where people who had suffered multiple times because they could not get to a phone and call for help, still could not afford to pay for the service. Each quarter when I was able to give a system away for free, it brought so much satisfaction to be able to call a person and hear their excitement and relief when they were told they were receiving one for free.
One day I was monitoring the phone call of a new sales rep who was about to give away their very first unit for free. What I was about to hear stunned me. The phone rang 3 or 4 times and then was answered by the sweetest voice of an elderly woman named Abigail. For a couple of minutes the sales rep refreshed her memory of the conversation they had a few weeks back when Abigail first called in to inquire of the system after she spent 6 hours outside in her backyard yelling for help until a neighbor finally came home and heard her. After revisiting the need for the Life Alert system, I could hear the excitement in the sales rep’s voice as they prepared to surprise Abigail with the news that she was going to receive a free system.
The rep said, “Well Abigail, I am so excited to tell you that we are going to give you this much needed security for absolutely no cost. What do you think about that?!” After a short pause, Abigail responded with a much different tone of voice. Clearly irritated she said, “There ain’t anything free in life! What’s the catch?” And then…she hung up the phone. She never returned our follow up phone calls.
As I read Jesus’ words in our text for today, that conversation with Abigail came to mind. To summarize in my own words what Jesus said, “Why do you call me your Lord and not do what I tell you? If you truly believe that I speak the truth, then you will do what I say. If you do what I tell you, you will endure and prosper. If you merely hear what I say and do not do what I say, then you are only setting yourself up for disaster.”
What we believe should have and in fact does have a direct impact on our behavior. For whatever reason, Abigail didn’t believe a person or a company could really be so compassionate as to give away a Life Alert system without having a catch or a gimmick. What she believed had a direct impact on how she responded to our offer. As it turns out, about 3 weeks later Abigail’s son called with credit card in hand because he had come to visit her, only to find her on the kitchen floor with a broken hip. She had been laying there for hours.
Jesus calls us to obedience because He wants what is best for us. God has not given us His Word and His commands and instructions to test us, but to bless us. God knows we would fail any test of obedience, that is why He sent Jesus to live the perfect life of faith we should have and die a perfect death in our place. Christ has fulfilled God’s laws and expectations on our behalf. Through faith in Christ as Lord, we are forgiven and our salvation is secure. Christ calls us to obedience not to earn God’s blessing, but so that we would receive the blessings God has already given to us in Jesus.
Often times when we are searching for God’s guidance in our life, we focus on what we want God to tell us tomorrow and overlook what He has told us to do already. If we desire to see God and hear God tomorrow, He calls us first to believe that He is in fact God, that He is our Lord, and be faithful and obedient to what He has told us today.
I very much like what missionary Elisabeth Elliot says:
“Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obedient in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.”
God has given us His precious Word and has promised to work His miraculous grace through what He has told us and the promises He has made to us. May He grant us all the strength of faith to say “yes Lord! I will obey.”
Well thanks for joining me for another daily devotion in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
