Greetings beloved. Praise the Lord for His goodness and His mercy; and for His Spirit, which imparts knowledge and understanding to all those that walk inline with Him. Today’s scripture is from Matthew:
But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Matthew 19:22
If we read the story of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-26, we see that in verse 21, Jesus asked him to give up all that he had and follow Him. The young man was attached to his worldly possessions and found the task of relinquishing them for Jesus to be grievous. Many professed Christians have this same problem of being reluctant to give up the lust of the flesh. They wont make a full commitment to Christ because they became attached to the temporal things of the world. The Devil will use the thing that is most arduous to renounce, to keep you from getting closer to Christ. It will turn out that the thing that we mostly cherished, will be the same thing that keeps us from entering into the kingdom of God. We must put and keep Christ before all things in this world(Matthew 10:37). This can only happen if we truly understand the love that Christ has towards us by studying His Word(John 15:13, Romans 5:6-8, Colossians 1:21, Philippians 2:6-8). Jesus gave up everything Just for us.
But, if you do give up those possessions, even grievously, what then?
After seeing what Jesus gave up for us, we should be willing to give up those things for Him. As well, Jesus tells us to give the things that would be harmful to us and would take our focus off of Him who gives us life. The Devil is much more wiser than us and would use anything to distract us from God.
But on the subject of giving them up grievously, remember proverbs 23:7 “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…”, if you don’t give up with a willing heart, you’ll still become attached to them as Lot’s wife who was attached to the things in Sodom and Gomorrah(Genesis 19-17-26) and when it came time to choose, she chose the perishable things and became desolate along with whatever she didn’t want to leave.
So we must remember that the Lord pulls us away from things that are harmful to us; All His plans towards us are peaceful because He is a good God(Jeremiah 29:11).