Your Father's Good Pleasure

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Luke 12:32-34

While reading the other day, I came across this passage. I love verse 32! Don’t be afraid because God finds joy in giving you the kingdom. It pleases Him to give this all satisfying pleasing thing to us, to give us the kingdom. He doesn’t just give it to us, but He finds pleasure in giving it to us. Isn’t this wonderful to hear?

So what do we do now that we know God finds joy in giving us the kingdom? We live as citizens in His kingdom. What does that look like? What do citizens of God’s Kingdom live like? Verse 33 and 34 give us part of that picture. We quit living for this world. We are citizens of a kingdom that is to come and we need to live for that kingdom. We don’t do this to earn it. We do this because that is how His people live. The treasures offered in this world have no value compared the treasure given to us in the kingdom to come. When will we start living like we believe that?

Wash Your Hands Of You

"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?” Isaiah 58:6-7

I have come across this passage a couple of times recently. I wanted to dig into it a little bit and post about it but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say yet. Then today while reading a post on the Gospel Coalition website, it hit me. Tullian Tchividjian’s post focused on reaching up to God and out to others and how the Gospel causes us do that. The gospel does not cause us to focus on ourselves. Here are a few of the things in the post that I really liked, but click here to read his full post titled Up And Out, Not In.

The gospel causes us to look up to Christ and what he did, out to our neighbor and what they need, not in to ourselves and how we’re doing. There’s nothing about the gospel that fixes my eyes on me.

The more you see that the gospel isn’t about you, the more spiritual you will become.

Real spirituality is forgetting about yourself, washing your hands of you.

He also included in this post a quote from Martin Luther:

God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does.

This brings me back to the passage in Isaiah that I started with. Why do we do these things? Do we do these things to be accepted by God? I fear that the answer is often “Yes.” Is that why we should do them? Absolutely not! I love that quote from Luther, “God doesn’t need our good works.” It is not what makes us right. He doesn’t need them because we have already been made right through Christ Jesus. That doesn’t mean we don’t do these works. We work because people need to hear about God’s Love and feel God’s Love, just as we have.

Don’t do work to make yourself look good. As Tchividjian says, "wash your hands of you" and take people to Jesus. The Gospel will cause you to do that if you let it.