Choose Life (Part Forty-Nine): Drink From the Waters (Part Four)

Lay Down Your Heavy Burden

Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?  

― John 5:5-6, NKJV

We continue this week with the story of the sick man healed at the Pool of Bethesda. [John 5:1-15].

Not $3 Worth, But All of God:

How so well did Wilbur Rees write of such? All they want is "Three Dollars Worth of God." Their heart's cry is for just a limited amount, dose of God, a God they can use, a God they can control, a God after their own image. So, they cry,

"I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep,
but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk
or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth.
I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack.
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please."  

— Wilbur Rees.

How much of God are you looking for? 

I Surrender ALL.

How much of God do you want? How much of God will satisfy your soul? The rich young ruler wanted just enough to make him feel good about heaven. Jesus jostled him to a rude awakening. Why think you He will treat you any differently? God does not come in measures. He would have all or nothing. A.W. Tozer puts it like this,

"God wants the whole person, and He will not rest till He gets us in entirety. No part of the man will do."

His call to us is to love Him with our all, without measure. [Matthew 22:37; Luke 10:27] "To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart." (A.W. Tozer)

Moses chose His ways, His heart. 

He chose to know God for himself. The Israelites, on the other hand, chose His acts, His hands. They just wanted what they could get. Like Solomon, Moses chose rightly, and he got it all. He became known as a friend of God [Numbers 12:8]. Wow! What a privilege? Wow! What intimacy in the relationship? What a placing in God? And, that is available to us also. 

Guess how different our prayer will be if we push to this level. God himself gives credence to such by naming Moses as one of those who could move His hands. [Ezekiel 14:14] God loves us all the same but does not relate to us equally. We each determine how God relates to us. Remember, the word says, "draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." He only responds to the level, intensity, and depth of your drawing. 

You got the keys. How much of God do you want?

© 2017 Akin Akinbodunse

Link to Study Series:

Choose Life (Part Forty-Eight): Drink From the Waters (Part Three)

Choose Life (Part Fifty): Drink From the Waters (Part Five)

Link to Other Resources:

Unchanged Word of God (David Jeremiah)

Don't Tell Me There Ain't No God (Gary McDougall)

Stay Salt: The World Has Changed (Rebecca Manley Pippert)

God Has Not Changed His Mind About You (Andrea Lynn Gates)