He…said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…” —Luke 18:31
In our natural life In our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him— “…till we all come…to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian life should be. The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord.In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him. Nothing ever diverted our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in others where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned our Lord even the slightest degree away from His purpose to go “up to Jerusalem.”“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happened to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our “Jerusalem.” There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going “up to [our] Jerusalem.”“…there they crucified Him…” (Luke 23:33). That is what happened when our Lord reached Jerusalem, and that event is the doorway to our salvation. The saints, however, do not end in crucifixion; by the Lord’s grace they end in glory. In the meantime our watchword should be summed up by each of us saying, “I too go ‘up to Jerusalem.’ ”
Good morning God and thank you for this devotional and the time David and I were able to spend together reading and praying over it. This line in the devotional had particular impact on us: “In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him.” We read this and understood it to mean that if we are to be living in your will, we will be prepared to surrender whatever it is we hold dear, including our natural lives to You; and that we will, through our surrender, bring our natural lives to places where You can crucify the natural man in us.
And God says…”You are on the right track. To be completely “Jerusalem surrendered” means that you no longer bring your ideas and plans to Me for a blessing. You no longer just say grace after a meal. You surrender the making of the meal, and say “grace”, that is surrender the making of the meal and everything else in your life to Me as well. You ultimately get to the place where you are living in a surrendered state, with the goal being the complete surrender of your life to me all the time. This step is difficult for you just like it was difficult for Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, and Paul and many other men and women that prayed to become men and women after My own heart.”
“This side of heaven your goal is to live as much of your life as you can, in a surrendered state, abandoning the big four (to look good, feel good, be right and to be in control), as much as you can, and leave the remaining parts of your unsurrendered life to Me and my grace.”
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