Sunday, July 17, 2011

ONE SOLUTION FOR ALL PROBLEMS

                                                                          
                                                               An extract from The Best of R.A.Torrey is given below:

A young woman in England many years ago always wore a golden locket that she would not allow anyone to open or look into and everyone thought there must be some romance connected with that locket and that in that locket must be the picture of the one she loved. The young woman died at an early age and after her death the locket was opened, everyone wondering whose face they would find within. And in the locket was found just a little slip of paper with these words written - "Whom having not seen, I love." (I Pet 1:8). Her Lord Jesus was the only lover she knew and the only lover she longed for.

Yes, one master solution for all our problems is to fall in love with our Lord and that is what we find in Luke 10:27a, where it says, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind . . . It obviously means that we should love Him with all our faculties.

Basically, in the Old Testament, God gave the Ten Commandments. All the laws in the Old Testament can be condensed into these Ten Commandments. Somebody once figured out that there are 35 million laws trying to enforce these Ten Commandments. In other words, all the laws emerge out of these Ten Commandments. In the New Testament, however these very Ten Commandments are condensed into just two. The first of which is to 'love the Lord'.


Let us briefly analyze the above verse:

Firstly, it says ‘with all your heart’. Loving God ‘with all your heart’ obviously implies that we should love God more than anyone or anything else. Our aim should be not to please people but God in all things. In John 5:41, Jesus declared, I am not looking for human praise. Again in John 12:43, the Lord said referring to a group of people that, They loved human approval rather than the approval of God. People crave to win the approval of those around them, but Jesus wasn’t like that. In fact, in John 8:29, He said that He always does that which pleases the father. Hence, we need to show our love towards God by setting our hearts on Him alone and pleasing Him. A saying goes like this: love is seeking to make another person happy. Thus, we need to love the Lord and make Him happy.

It seems, a newly married man took-up two jobs just to please his wife with gifts and material comfort but she left him for another man with her complain being that, “she wanted her man to spend time with her”.

Thus, our priority on which we set our hearts on should be to give God the first place in our lives.

Secondly it says, ‘with all your soul’. Here the ‘soul’ refers to the emotional area of one’s life. In 1Th 5:16 it says, Be joyful always. One chooses to be joyful only when he or she has the complete faith that all his or her problems and/or worries are taken care of. While on the other hand, it is understood that whoever rejoices in the Lord, has already exercised his or her faith in the Lord.

Consider this saying: If you brood over your troubles you will have a perfect hatch. We should love Him emotionally too. Psa 37:4 says, Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

Hab 3:17-18 says, Even though the fig trees have no fruit and no grapes grow on the vines, even though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no grain, even though the sheep all die and the cattle stalls are empty, I will still be joyful and glad, because the LORD God is my savior. Here the author makes his stand of faith clear by saying that nothing would stop him from rejoicing in the Lord.

Thirdly it says, ‘with all your strength’. Strength implies ‘deeds’ as deeds emerge out of strength. Reading the Bible, praying, attending fellowship and witnessing for the Lord on a regular basis are the important deeds that express our love for the Lord. 1Co 15:58 says . . . Keep busy always in your work for the Lord, since you know that nothing you do in the Lord's service is ever useless. A saying goes like this: ‘Faith and works are as inseparable as sun and sunlight. Faith is the sun and good works are its rays’. Jas 3:13 says, Are there any of you who are wise and understanding? You are to prove it by your good life, by your good deeds performed with humility and wisdom.Mat 3:8 says, Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins.

Finally it says, ‘with your entire mind’. Here the ‘mind’ refers to the decision making aspect of our life. Deciding to obey the Word at all times, at all cross-roads that we face, results in expressing our love for the Lord. John 14:15 says, If you love me, you will obey my commandments. Someone is reported to have asked a successful concert violinist, as to how she became so skilled. She said it was by ‘planned-neglect’, that is, she planned to neglect everything that was not related to her goal.

Gen 22:2-3 says, “Take your son," God said, "your only son, Isaac, whom you love so much, and go to the land of Moriah. There on a mountain that I will show you, offer him as a sacrifice to me. Early the next morning Abraham cut some wood for the sacrifice, loaded his donkey, and took Isaac and two servants with him. They started out for the place that God had told him about. Abraham demonstrated his love for the Lord over his own son, whom he loved so much, that he decided and started off to offer his son in the early morning of the following day. This is the real love for the Lord that shows itself in action.

If one were to make these four aspects of love towards God involving the ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘soul’ and ‘strength’ as the four corners of one’s spiritual foundation, nothing, I repeat, nothing, would ever be able to shake us. In other words, falling in love with the Lord gives us a special anointing to overcome each and every onslaught of the evil one through whomever it may choose to attack us, thus keeping us unaffected.

In Eph 2:4 it says that, God’s love for us is very great. Hence, He commanding and expecting us to love Him is not only logical but it is, in fact, for our own good.

In 1Ch 17:20 we read that, King David prayed saying, LORD, there is none like you; we have always known that you alone are God.

Some phrases meant for referring to the love for the Lord from the book of Song of Solomon are as follows:

 Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my dearest compared to other men. . .

 My lover is handsome and strong; He is one in ten thousand.

 My lover speaks to me.

 My lover is mine and I am His.

 He is altogether lovely.



Consider the book, The Heavenly Man, an autobiographical account written by Bro Yun. (This is a book one must not miss to read.) Bro Yun is a Chinese evangelist and pastor. He was caught for a third time and imprisoned in Zhengzhou Maximum Security Prison. In his autobiography he records his miraculous escape from the prison in May of 1997.

Please note how Bro Yun, against all odds, in the midst of physical suffering chose to seek the Lord firmly with determination and was so lost in his love for the Lord that enabled him to endure the physical torture. It also resulted not only in his deliverance from the prison but obtain the much needed healing of his crippled legs.

It is written about him in OpenHeaven.com

He was repeatedly beaten and tortured with electric batons. He was kicked and trampled upon. He was tortured with needles being jabbed underneath his fingernails. He was mocked by the other prisoners. He was hung by his handcuffs and transported so roughly that the cold cuffs sliced through his wrists until they were all bloodied and the wrist bones exposed. Through all of these horrendously painful experiences, the Word of the Lord kept coming to Brother Yun, encouraging him, and strengthening him in his faith, until he could face pretty much anything without fear. He declared that God gave him the mercy and the grace to endure it.

An extract from his book:

I was taken to an interrogation room where several guards forced me to the floor and made me sit with my legs apart. I begged them not to beat my fractured legs, but one sinister-looking man hardened his heart and pulled out his baton. To ensure I would never be able to escape, he struck my legs between my knees and feet repeatedly. He destroyed my legs . . . . . My legs below my knees turned completely black and there was no feeling in them at all. . . .

I had no Bible with me, so I meditated on God's Word from memory and prayed in tears for the churches. I shouted out Bible verses at the top of my voice [and] I sang out loudly day and night. . . .. .

When I arrived at the main iron gate leading out to the courtyard I discovered it was already open! . . . I walked past several guards in the yard but nobody said a word to me. I then strolled through the main gate of the prison, which for some strange reason was also standing ajar! My heart was pounding! I was now standing on the street outside the Zhengzhou Number One Maximum Security prison! I was told later nobody had ever escaped from that prison.

(Later) The moment I started to pedal the bicycle was the first time I realized the Lord had healed my feet and legs! My mind had been so focused on obeying the Lord . . . that I never even noticed that God had healed me. I never felt any healing power. From the time my legs were smashed with a baton until the day I escaped, my legs had remained completely black and unusable. I couldn’t even stand up, let alone walk. The most I could do was crawl a short distance by grabbing hold of the wall. Brother Musheng told me later that when he passed me on the third floor (of the prison)I was walking normally, so it seems the Lord must have healed my legs while I was still in the prison cell.


It is clear from the above extract that endurance, deliverance & healing comes from the Lord; endurance - so as to be able to go through all that the Lord wants us to go through; deliverance from all kinds of unpleasant environments (whether bondage or entanglement or lack) & healings that are needed. But we need to do our part of falling in love with the Lord, not just in word but in deed.


Consider another extract.

The hymn writer Fanny Crosby gave us more than 6,000 gospel songs. Although blinded by an illness at the age of 6 weeks, she never became bitter. One time when a preacher sympathetically remarked, “I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when He showered so many other gifts upon you.” She quickly replied, “Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I should be born blind?” “Why?” asked the surprised clergyman. “Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior!”

The above extract taken from Bible.org, shows that Fanny Crosby was able to overcome her problem only because of the fact that she fell in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder, Mat 22:38 says that, “This is the greatest and the most important commandment”. Whatever your problem is, this is the only solution.