July 28

What is it that causes us most concern? What do we fear? The answers to that question run the gamut of human experience. Some of us fret over the day-to-day matters of paying bills and meeting obligations. Some of us worry about health issues. Some of us agonize over growing threats that loom large over the world—global warming, terrorism, the coarsening of our morals.

Yet, we are admonished in the Word that we not fret and we not fear. We are assured that His perfect love for us casts out all fear. (I John 4:18) When we trust Jesus, we leave the matters that concern us in His capable hands and go about our business of walking in faith.

Yet there is something that even Jesus was cautious against, and if He found Himself in a position to guard against it, we, too, should take a good look at ourselves as regards the matter. In John 6:15 we are told, “Jesus, knowing that they meant to make Him their King, withdrew to the hillside, alone with God” (John 6:15). One proclivity of man that is most difficult to overcome is the ingrained desire to be important, to be recognized as a leader, to be someone of significance.

Jesus knew that all glory in heaven and earth was His, but that it was not to be conferred upon Him by mere men. We, too, must flee the tendency we have to allow others to lift us up. We must labor diligently at the tasks before us, performing them as though we were working for the Lord Himself and allowing HIM to recognize and commend our effort. Rather than the praise of men, we must desire His, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” (Luke 19:17)