A Willing Heart

A Willing Heart
Can you say, as Jesus did, “I delight to do thy will, O God.” In order to do that you must look beyond the immediate to what lies ahead. How did Jesus endure the agony of the cross and all the horrible treatment that was a part of it? “For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross. . . .” Heb. 12:2

Jesus laid down His life willingly! “. . . I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” John 10:17-18
And Jesus told Peter, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” Mt. 26:53 “He could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set Him free!” but how then would we have been saved? It was His love and His grace that contrained Him and motivated Him.

And it is that same love that He gives to us who know Him as Savior “ because God's love (agape love) has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:5 We know that love is from God and not from us because our fallen natures are self- centered and preoccupied with ourselves. But God gives a measure of His love to His children. Love is part of the fruit of the Spirit. Gal. 5:22

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” 1 John 3:16-18 NIV

I share with you the greatest experience of my life when my wife and I experienced God’s love poured into our hearts with a depth we had not known so deeply. We both loved each other a great deal for 54 years. Eros married love, phileo friendship love, and God’s unselfish agape love–God had given all that to us. My wife was by far my best friend in my entire life. But when she was stricken with pancreatic cancer, we both faced by far the greatest test or trial of our lives. And God sustained us with His love, with His peace, and with His joy in the midst of that three-year trial. We prayed together and asked the Lord not only for His sustaining grace and His peace and joy, but also for a depth of love that would carry us through it all. He immediately answered with His approval and we both gained an insight into the depth of God’s love greater even than we already knew.

Those three years were by far the worst experience of our entire lives (and I’m 77) and also the greatest because we experienced a love for each other and for and from the Lord that made it all worthwhile, painful though it was and still is. The apostle Paul experienced tremendous pain and hardship in his life and yet he could pray, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “I pray that you may . . . grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Eph. 3:17-19

God gave me such a strong desire to care for and serve my wife in her terminal illness and how thankful we both are that He enabled her to stay at home (except for surgeries and a 12-day hospital stay and later a 22-day stay). What a wonderful gift from God is a willing heart to serve Him and to serve others. If you don’t have it, ask him for it “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Phil. 2:13 It is God who gives you the motivation; you don’t generate it of yourself, but if you realize you are lacking it, then you look to Him and ask Him to change your attitude. “Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.”

There’s an additional by-product of all of this. If God’s love is at work in your life as you serve Him and because of your love for Him, you serve one another as He commanded, then you have no room left for discouragement. “We faint not” because “we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Cor. 15:58 “A cheerful heart does good like a medicine” and a willing heart makes a cheerful heart. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

“My cup runneth over” with joy; let’s pray that it will also “run over” with God’s love. “Bear ye one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Bear those burdens with a willing heart, going the second mile knowing you are pleasing the Lord. “We make it our ambition to please the Lord.” 2 Cor. 5:9 “See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently.” 1 Peter 1:22

[Note: thank you for the parts of this devotional I borrowed from last night’s message at Covenant Church in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.]
–Pastor Burnside