21 October 2013 - what matters to god

21 October 2013 - what matters to god

one’s life does not consist of possessions.

Abraham understands this.  It is only because of this that can obey when the LORD says, "Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you." 

We don't think of ourselves as too attached to our possessions.  Yet if anything happens to them, if our comfort and stability is threatened even a little, we are all too ready to take the situation fully into our own hands, worrying and working without calling God to mind.  And while God isn't calling everyone to go to foreign lands, leaving all behind, he is calling us all to have the detachment that makes such endeavors possible.  There is no future in anything else.

‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God.”

We can't expect to empty ourselves of attachments unless we fill ourselves with God and what matters to him.  This is Abraham's secret.  His faith is so strong that he can rely on it even as he empties himself of all that he knows.

Abraham did not doubt God’s promise in unbelief;
rather, he was empowered by faith and gave glory to God
and was fully convinced that what God had promised
he was also able to do.
Without faith in God in the center of our lives we will be at the mercy of fear, chasing after earthly things which cannot last.  Having faith in God's promise is the only way that we can be free from fear.

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.

We don't earn freedom and fearlessness.  We don't achieve them.  They are gifts of God.  To experience them we have simply to trust in him.  Let us put our faith in him as he comes to us to set us free.