Give Up Your Gold
By Michael Youssef, Ph.D.
Read Hebrews 11:24-27.
Gold is nothing more than a yellow rock, but it has been treasured as a valuable commodity in nearly every civilization down through history. As the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, Moses could have had lots of it. Life in the palace was comfortable and luxurious. He might even have become pharaoh himself one day. But the Bible says he traded gold for glory.
Moses gave up a life of power and luxury for the sake of Christ. Moses was obedient to God because he knew that the treasure of knowing Him was infinitely more valuable than mere gold. In contrast, generations before Moses was born, Joseph was a high-ranking official in Pharaoh's court. He had plenty of gold, but it didn't have a hold on his heart. His calling was to remain in the palace and influence life in Egypt from his powerful position.
You see, the "gold" we must avoid is not earthly riches in and of themselves, but whatever idols stands in the way of our obedience to God's calling on our lives. And that is why the Word of God commends Moses for giving up the world's gold for God's glory. He let go of all the gold of Egypt in order to obey the call of God on his life.
So we must ask ourselves: What kind of "gold" has a hold on me? What is keeping me from obeying the will of God for me? Whatever it may be, Christ is far better.
Prayer: Lord, lead me by Your Spirit to identify the idols in my heart that are keeping me from cherishing the glory of Your presence. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
"He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin" (Hebrews 11:25).
The Age Of Anxiety
“But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
— Luke 12:7
A couple of years after the end of World War II, the British author W. H. Auden wrote a poem about the age in which he lived. Auden entitled this poem “The Age of Anxiety.” Amazingly, the label still describes our time though Auden coined it half a century ago.
Do you ever lie awake at night, worrying about this and anxious about that? If so, you know how distressing that experience can be, tossing and turning, trying to sleep while your concerns hound you. But if you’re a Christian, you needn’t allow worry to plague you. Instead, you can turn over your anxieties to your heavenly Father, casting them on the One who cares for you. I heard about one Christian man who envisioned lifting each of his big burdens, like a large stone, and handing it to Jesus. When Christ took hold of it, suddenly the rock shrank to a pebble. Our worries do indeed shrink when we leave them in God’s care.
A missionary was teaching a Hindu woman, who had just accepted Christ, how to pray the Lord’s Prayer. The woman prayed, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” Then she said, “Stop! Do you mean that God is our Father?” The missionary said, “Yes.” She said, “That’s enough! If God is our Father, then there’s nothing to worry about!”
Do you remember being a child, trusting your parent or guardian to take care of all your concerns? Remember how, no matter how frightened you might have been, all your fears dissipated when you put your hand into the hand of a loving parent? In the same way, we have a divine and heavenly Parent on whom we can still cast our burdens, no matter how big or how small they are.
Do you have a burden causing you to worry today? Hand it to God, your Father who cares for you. Allow Him to give you the peace that comes from trusting Him with everything that concerns you.
“When you have nothing left but God, then for the
first time you become aware that God is enough.”
Maude Royden
The Wisdom Of The World
“Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”
— 1 Corinthians 1:20
Our world prides itself on nothing more than its vaunted wisdom. Having confused sophistication for wisdom and knowledge with understanding, our world looks down on those who believe in God and trust in His Word. Yet the Bible says that God has made the wisdom of this world foolishness. Most, however, do not really believe that. Sadder still, even Christians are impressed and intimidated by the world’s apparent wisdom.
But let’s take a quick look at what the world’s wisdom has accomplished through the years. Wisdom supposedly reached a pinnacle in the Golden Age of Greek philosophy. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle brought to light vast stores of knowledge that the world had not hitherto known. Yet their writings have done little to regenerate humankind and alleviate humanity’s problems. More recently (several hundred years ago), we ushered in the Age of Reason, supposedly a golden age of wisdom. But in truth, these were some of the bloodiest years France has ever seen. The guillotine, like some huge monster, consumed its victims until the streets of Paris ran with blood, and that Age of Reason became a very unreasonable, frightening, and terrible time. Even in this modern age, we haven’t learned our lessons. We’ve accumulated great stores of knowledge, so much that we cannot even measure it. Yet have we really arrived at wisdom? The twentieth century has been history’s bloodiest era.
Do we really want to rely on the world’s “wisdom” if it has resulted in all this bloodshed? Let’s bank our lives on the wisdom of God, wisdom that resulted in a different type of bloodshed—the blood shed by Jesus as He hung on the cross to die for you and me. God’s wisdom can do more to ennoble human life and alleviate the pain of human existence than anything conceived by the wisdom of this world.
“Wisdom is the something that enables
us to use knowledge rightly.”
Paul Lee Tan
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