TAKING THE I OUT

Can I pray for you in any way? Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk.com. 

In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:43b-45

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Today is Labor Day and my wife Grace and I were driving back to Virginia Beach from a nice vacation in Pennsylvania when the Lord spoke to me in a special way, a way that caused me to forego the devotion I was going to write today from Proverbs. I’ll get to that tomorrow.

For now, I’ll testify to you about this spiritual enlightenment that came about as it typically does in a very mundane way.

I was driving south of Altoona on I-99 when I happened to glance at the radio in my Jeep Liberty. It has a touch pad radio built into the dash complete with satellite radio which we were listening to at the time. As you might imagine, we were tuned to the Christian music channel and as I looked at the display, I saw the channel number along with the following:

“CHRSTIAN”

I can’t say I ever noticed it before but my mind immediately thought, “They misspelled Christian. How could they do that?” It was at that point that the Lord spoke to my heart and mind saying:

Think about it. There’s no I in Christian. We need to take out the “I”.

Wow! Epiphany moment in the Cummings vehicle. Another one.

You see, this happens all the time, maybe because I am always thinking about the Lord. I drive, He speaks, and then I scramble to grab a pen and the notepad I keep in my car to jot down the highpoints so I can go back and refer to them later. Relying on memory doesn’t work. Have tried that and the Lord has taught me to make sure I write things down for when He is speaking, we need to make every effort to capture His words to put them into action. They must be our priority.

Back to why we need to take the “I” out.

The main reason is that it’s not all about any one individual. In other words, a lot of people today live as if the universe revolves around them. They only care about how they are doing and how well their needs and desires are met. They have little worry or compassion for others because their world is “I”-centric.

This is completely contradictory to the way Jesus lived. If anything defined Him, it was that He placed others before Himself in everything He did. He never was too busy to teach, heal, provide, serve, and even die so that others might live. That’s how much He cared for and loved everyone.

Look at His words from the Gospel of Mark on this matter:

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant  and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

The words came out of a discussion with two of His disciples, the brothers James and John. You’ll recall to follow Jesus after Simon Peter and Andrew.

The brothers asked Jesus whether they could sit to the right and left of Jesus when He went to His glory. Notice how they were thinking self centered or “I”-centric. Their request didn’t involve the rest of their brother disciples. It was only about them and their place in glory. They wanted to be first.

Jesus spoke to all the disciples and told them what it would take to achieve greatness. It wouldn’t come from selfish achievement but rather selfless servitude. Whoever wanted greatness would first need to be a great servant. If you wanted to finish first, you had to submit yourself fully to the desires of others, enslaved to their needs.

Through His words to His disciples, and to us today, Jesus is telling us that in order to be like Him, we need to take the “I” out of our life attitude and follow His lead of service. For as our scripture passage reminds us:

“Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

As Chrstians (intentional deletion), we are to do likewise, to take the “I” out and dedicate ourselves fully to the welfare of others, now and forever.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com