I have been so broken-hearted lately as I consider that I will not be able to see many people that I love so dearly for almost a whole entire year. The thought of not being to hug these wonderful people and speak to them face-to-face brings me to tears.
But I was inspired by a sermon by David Platt that I listened to about a week ago. Here is a small portion of it:
“Biblical Christianity sees supremecy of Christ and is SO infatuated by Him, so drawn toward Him that our love for Him drives EVERYTHING we do! And it is this superior love that changes our perspective on EVERYTHING in this world. And so the question before you, in light of this verse 26 in Luke chapter 14, is DO YOU LOVE CHRIST? DO YOU WANT CHRIST? Do you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul and your mind and your strength? I’m not asking if you go to church. I’m not asking if you read your Bible or if you pray or if you teach or if you do this or that or if you’re raising your kids good…rubbish! Get through the rubbish! DO YOU WANT CHRIST? Do you LOVE Christ? Is He the REASON WHY YOU LIVE and the ONE for whom your heart beats and your affections are driven? This is the picture of superior love that makes any other love look like hate (Luke 14:26). I want to be careful here, but I am convinced that in our culture today we idolize our children and our marriages and sex and relationships, parents, families, and friends to the point where Jesus Christ gets the leftovers from our affections, and it’s un-Christian. You can’t even be a disciple of Jesus if that’s the case. You forsake all relationships in favor of intimate relationship with Him. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. You want to know how this looks practically? I would point you to John Bunyan. John Bunyan lived in a time when it was not easy to be a follower of Christ, especially not easy to be a preacher of the Gospel of Christ. And he preached and he was told that if you don’t stop preaching, Bunyan, then you will be imprisoned. He and his family were not well off. As it was his wife and his children, one of whom was blind, barely had enough to eat and live on while he was free. He knew that if he was imprisoned, it would bring great harm upon his family. So what does he do? What do you do? What do you do when faced with that decision? Do you keep preaching? John Bunyan said, ‘Absolutely, you keep preaching.’ And he was imprisoned. And he wrote from his jail cell, ‘The parting with my wife and four children has often been to me in this place as the pulling of flesh from my bones. And that not only because I am fond of these great mercies (talking about his family, his children) but also because I have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family is likely to be meeting with, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart than all I have besides. Oh, the thought of the hardship I have thought my blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces. But yet,’ Bunyan said, ‘yet,’ from a prison cell he writes, ‘I MUST venture ALL with God…’ Jesus requires superior love. Does he have it from you?”
I feel like I can relate well with the broken-heartedness that John Bunyan is experiencing here, although my situation is not nearly as dire. I think of all the things I will miss in the lives of my dear family and friends while I am away, how I will be immensely grieved by the distance between us when they are struggling through various distresses and how I will long to be by their side in those times.
But I am comforted by the fact that although I must be separated from my loved ones, God will be with them. I know that He will never leave them or forsake them. He will catch every one of their tears. He will deliver them when they seek Him in their time of need. He is fighting for them. And He won’t let them go.
