JAMES MILLER: Stay vigilant in Christ

Published 12:49 pm Friday, April 26, 2024

The great decision Jesus was facing drove Him to pray for another way, but He chose to submit to His Father’s will: How will we respond?

We may never carry a cross to Golgotha. Thank God and I say that quite sincerely for the unblemished lamb of God (1 Peter 1:19).

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He has gone before us and did what we never could. Nevertheless, what about the daily challenges that confront us to take the course of least resistance rather than the narrow gate “and difficult way” leading to life that few have found?

Consider four steps, one by one as to how we might heed Jesus’ call of “follow me:

1. Seek quiet and solitude. Find time away from the roar of life and the crowd. After all, scripture invites us “to be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10. You and I know this can be the hardest thing to do humanly when challenge comes our way. But it’s the starting blocks toward making the Great Decision. Do it!

2. Stay spiritually alert. Knowing and being near Chest is no substitute for becoming like Him. Think of His companions just a stone throw away and yet, Jesus told them to pray, stay awake and alert. How about us? Perhaps this column can sound an alarm for all of us, like Ephesians 5:14. Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you life.

3. Keep looking up: His needful heart looked up. Looking up rather than around is a tremendous step toward moving forward in the kingdom life. As the Psalmist wrote: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1. Where the eyes of our heart focus is where we will cut through life’s challenges to make the great decision.

4. Decide to follow. Remember: we do not find our values in trials. We take them into prayer. As the great challenge of life comes on us, we have the moment between stimulus and response to address the situation. It’s within that moment that we make a choice: We bear the responsibility for being once again confronted with the great decision.

Let us all follow Christ in answering, not what I will, but what You will. What do we the living learn from a Man who died that we might live? It is noteworthy that He chided His disciples more than once that they could not stay awake for one hour.

When caught slumbering, they did not know what to tell Him. He admonished them to stay alert. (Matthew 26:38.; Luke 14:34).

Jesus knew this night was not only His moment of personal great decision, but a moment of encounter would come — and that so too would ours.

Saints, God wants us to seat alert at all times. In Jesus name we pray to the Father and Most High Priest.

James Miller Jr., of Lakeland, Ga., is a member of Burning-Bush Outreach Ministries, Valdosta.