As many of you know, I
have begun walking in preparation for participating in a 5K event. As I walk, I use a pedometer to keep up with
how I am doing. Since my goal is to run the 5K and not be in last place, I have
to measure myself against certain criteria.
If all I measured was distance, I would not achieve my goal. I have to also measure my time. I want to make it 5 kilometers but I also
want to run it faster as I progress in my training.
In the Christian life,
too often we measure our success by the wrong things because we are not clear
in our goal. We measure how much we read
the Bible, how long we pray, how well we witness, how often we attend
church. These are admiral measurements,
but a person can do all these things and still not achieve the goal of the
Christian life. The goal of the
Christian life is not to develop Christian disciplines. The goal of the Christian life is to love God
and enjoy Him forever. One can read
their Bible every day just to say they did it, without their Bible reading
helping them love Jesus more. One can
pray and check it off their list of things to do each day, without it helping
them to fall in love with Jesus. One can
witness, attend church or develop any other discipline but fall in love with
the discipline rather than fall in love with Jesus.
Reading our Bible is
good, but every time we read it we must ask ourselves how does my Bible reading
help me to love Jesus? I can read the
words on the page without falling in love with the person the book is
about. When I pray, am I praying to get
to know and love Jesus more? When I
witness, am I telling people about the one that I love more than anything else
in the world? When I attend church, am I
falling in love with Jesus more and more?
The goal of our
discipleship is not merely to obey commands, but to love the one we are
following all the more. After all Jesus
said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. So how do I measure my love for God? How can I tell if I am loving Him more and
more each day? Jesus said, by this all
men will know you are my disciples by your love one for another. The Apostles John said, “How can you say that
you love God whom you can’t see, if you can’t love your brother that you do
see.” The measure of how much I love God
is how much I love my brother. Think
about it.
