must be nice...

I love my church, I really do!  Right now we are focusing our attention on the book of Mark.  As our pastor put it, Mark is the twitter version of the gospel.  Mark is to the point.  He is not going to sugar coat anything, he is not going to add fluff to make us feel good about ourselves...he means says what he means and means what he says.  Today in church the sermon was over Mark 10: 17-31.  If you are not familiar with this passage it is the passage in which Jesus speaks to the rich young man.  Jesus gives the rich young man 4 instructions: 

1. Go
2. Sell everything you have
3. Give to the poor
4. Come, follow me

That is all.  Seems simple enough right?  Why did Jesus not just tell the rich young man to "come follow me"...just skip all the other stuff and get right down to what He really wanted?  Jesus knew that the rich young man was attached to his wealth and social status...He needed the man to get all of that "stuff" out of the way so that he could give Jesus his full allegiance.  In verse 22 of the passage it says "At this the man's face fell.  He went away sad, because he had great wealth".  Did he ever come and follow Jesus?  We don't know.  But one thing we do know is what is happening in our own life. 

We may not see ourselves as a "rich young ruler" or as wealthy by any means.  We may even sit back and compare ourselves to celebrities and those that we consider wealthy.  We dream of having the wealth that they have, we wish that we could just know what it is like to be that rich for one day.  We can't be content with what we have, because we continually compare ourselves to those that we will never be.  My pastor told us this morning that 50% of the world's population lives on about $2.50 a day...to those people we are who they aspire to be.  Let me give that a second to sink in...

Humbling isn't it?  To half of the world's population, we are the wealthy, and we are never satisfied with what we have.  I would venture to say that if you are reading this, you have a roof over your head, you have clothes to put on, you have the ability to wash said clothes, you have some form of transportation, you have food in your shelter (it may not be the food you want, but you have food), and you obviously have some means of connecting to the internet (computer, iPad, smart phone, etc).  Ladies and gentlemen, that list of things is more than half the world will ever have!  And yet we complain (myself included) that our car isn't nice enough, our internet isn't fast enough, the clothes we have aren't good enough.  As we are sitting in our air conditioned/heated houses watching celebrities on our TV and thinking "must be nice to be them..." there are many in the world today looking at us and thinking the exact same thing about us. 

Jesus knew that the rich young ruler needed to give up his possessions and his wealth before he could give Jesus his full allegiance.  What is it in your life that you need to give up in order to give Jesus your full allegiance? 

***In case you are wondering, this blog was not written to condemn or judge anyone...I am reading this and looking at myself in the mirror as well...***