The Great Expectation

Posted by Christian St John in Faithblogs | 0 comments

[audio:GreatExpectation.mp3|titles=The Great Expectation|artists=Christian St John]
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In the Bible it tells us that “A lot will be expected from everyone who has been given a lot. More will be demanded from everyone who has been entrusted with a lot.” Luke 12:48

Have you ever given thought to what you have? Forget what you don’t have and just think for a minute about what you do have. Maybe you have a loving family. Maybe you have financial wealth. Maybe you have talents and gifts. Whatever it is we all have something to be thankful for. If nothing else all believers have God’s free gift of salvation and that’s no small thing.

The question is are we willing to take what we have and use it for the glory of the Lord and His continued work here on earth? We make all kinds of excuses as to why we can’t share with others and yet the truth is we have been told to go and evangelize to the lost (Matt. 28:19).

So what’s stopping us? Well I believe that part of the problem comes from the fact that we haven’t truly grasped just what we have been given. Ask yourself, “Have I ever been blown away by what Jesus did for me?” Have you ever wept over His sacrifice for you on that splintering cross? Have you ever thought about how much it cost the Father to reconcile us to Himself? I never truly understood this or appreciated it until I watched The Passion of the Christ and saw up close and personal what Jesus did for me… and for you.

Maybe you have been blessed with a great family, money, health, talents and so on, but all believers from the smallest to the greatest, the weakest to the strongest have been given more than could ever be repaid. And yet we often go through life oblivious to those who are searching for what we have. We walk through life spiritually wealthy and say to ourselves, “I’m alright Jack” and often we couldn’t care less about those who are spiritually poor.

And yet the Bible doesn’t let us off so lightly. “A lot will be expected from everyone who has been given a lot.” If you are a believer then you should appreciate the valuable gift that God has given you. If not think on these things which are all part and parcel of God’s free gift – salvation from death and hell, the promise of eternal life beyond this life, the Holy Spirit who brings comfort and peace, the promise of a full life, being a member of the world’s largest family, love that knows no limits, hope that helps us endure through even the darkest of days, and faith that knows that God is always at work even when we can’t see Him. There is so much more that could be added to the lost but the point is we have been given so much. Therefore, the Bible tells us, much is expected from us.

What does this “expectation” look like? Well, elsewhere in Scripture we are told to freely give as we have freely received (Matt. 10:8) and again Jesus in Matthew 28:19 told us to “Go and make disciples.”

Many believers life what I call a static faith, they are stuck in the routine of life and either can’t see how to share their faith or they just don’t care to do it. Either that or they’ve never truly experienced salvation and hence can’t truly appreciate just what they’ve been given.

God calls us to go out of our way to interact with those around us and share with them what we have been given. And if we truly believe and appreciate that we have been given much then we will indeed go out of our way to help other experience Jesus for themselves. Because if you’ve truly experienced Jesus you’ll want the whole world to know Him!

Christian St John M.Div, BChM, ACS
August, 2009

Picture by Stephen Eastop