Nov 5 - Mark 10:27 - EVERYTHING

Jesus looked at him and loved him and said,

"You lack one thing. Go, sell everything you have ...

Then come, follow me."

Mark 10:21

This week, we’re studying the scriptural word “everything.”

•      This word occurs twice in this story in Mark 10. Yesterday, we discovered God’s gift of everything. Jesus joyfully revealed that “27 with God … everything is possible”! In fact, about half the time, “everything” points to what God gives to us!
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•      The other half of the time, “everything” points to what we are called to give to God. And that’s what today’s verse is about.

The context is a “good man” who is trying to impress Jesus, saying, “20 I have kept [God’s commandments] since I was a boy.” “Aren’t I a good boy?” implied the man. But Jesus wasn’t impressed. In fact, he tells him that “being good” isn’t good enough.

“So how do you draw close to God?” this young man desperately wants to know.

He wants to follow … he really does … but … he wants to set the terms and conditions of his following.

Isn’t that the natural human condition? Isn’t that what you want to do? (It sure is what I continually want to do!) I want to set the terms and conditions of my following … of my obedience … of even my giving.

Does God, for example, want 10%, a tithe? No. In the New Testament, the amount we give is not legalistic. And yet the standard is definitely not lower. God doesn’t want so much of this and so much of that. God wants everything. He is exclusive. No half-measures will do. When Jesus says, “Give me everything, he means it.”

In one of my favorite all-time quotes is …

[This] is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder -- in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who wants to fly

(but it’s 100% out of the shell …

or not flying at all)