Have you ever tried to take a bone away from a possessive Rottweiler? Or German Shepherd…. Or Chow….Or I suppose even a poodle?
Well, neither have I. But I suspect it’s not like “taking candy from a baby”… or wait… may be it is! I think I have seen that post-Hallowe’en attempt before and as I recall it went very badly.
But those who know, say it is easy–in fact very easy to acquire that aforementioned bone!
The trick involves a whole new strategy: you don’t even try to ‘take’ the bone at all. Instead, you offer the critter a meaty, juicy T-bone steak. Miraculously the bone can now be yours without incident.
Our 19th century preacher friend Thomas Chalmers said it like this,
“The love of God and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity and that so irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in the same bosom.”
“The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one.”
“When he is told to love God supremely, this may startle another; but it will not startle him to whom God has been revealed in peace, and in pardon, and in all the freeness of an offered reconciliation.”
The psalmist invites us “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm. 34:8)
As the late internationally known evangelist Billy Graham observed,
“I have never known a man who received Christ and ever regretted it.”
Are you gnawing on some bone that has on it no nourishment? Are you thinking that if you just gnaw long enough you may find some sustenance?
But the gnawing in your gut is shouting something quite different. The men we heard from this past Sunday are telling how Christ has satisfied their longing. Finding Him, they have gladly dropped their former ‘bones’ to embrace Him.
So can you!
More tomorrow…
thebrokenrunner 