The above verse, in some ways, is very much akin to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount in as much as what we are bade to accomplish is an almost impossible task to achieve on a daily basis. If we, as believers, are not “of the world”, it nonetheless remains that we are stuck within it; and by that very fact we find ourselves limited by our state of humanity. It is a condition wherein we all too often lose focus in any attempt we make to juggle life as it comes against us. Some preach of our “walking on the water” with Christ, but few ever address the truth that walking through the mud every day inevitably leaves us each evening with muddy feet that need to be washed. As Thomas Merton has well documented in his literary efforts, secluding ourselves in a monastery somewhere will not cure the problem to any great degree either, for while we may thus achieve a bit of victory with what our heart and soul soak up during any twenty-four hour period, the mind is a perpetual “jibber-jabber” almost impossible to stifle for any length of time. Thus. It seems to me, that Jesus, in listing the above tetrad and including the one not yet dealt with here in so far as any examination of its meaning, was not suggesting that we need our own power in order to accomplish any sort of success in loving God via the other three items. He does not imply that we must groan and grunt until our spiritual muscles expand into twelve inch biceps capable of bringing all else under control. Indeed, I find it to be exactly the precise opposite concept. Making time for solitude, for a one-on-one encounter with Him in the Holy Ghost, is not an easy task. To be “still”, mentally and physically, is a labor worthy of Hercules; and it is best achieved, not out of our own determination, but through an act of surrender on our part wherein we, more or less, allow His presence to envelop us as it comes forth, out of His own volition, from that inner well within us. This holds true for almost any area in which we might be used as a vessel to witness of the reality of His resurrection……
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