It all started so simply. Struck by the beauty of the crucified Savior, I would do anything asked of me. I’d go anywhere. Speak to anyone. Anything, everything for him.
Yet, somewhere along the way, it stopped being simple. A wife. And a kid. And another. And another. And another. And people to reach. So many people to reach!
So I got busy. Insanely busy. And I placed on myself a cross that Jesus never meant for me to carry in my own power.
The weight of that cross made me feel ...
Distracted.
Burdened.
Heavy.
And disheartened.
I found myself in a quagmire of despair, locked in a dungeon of doubt, exhausted and wounded from fighting endless battles. Through mountains of responsibilities, early starts, long hours, and late nights, I lost something precious.
I want to go back.
Back to where I started.
Back to where all I had was the cross.
Back to the newness of sitting alone with the Scriptures, my heart and my mind illumined to something glorious; Someone I couldn’t fully explain but who put me in awe.
“God, restore me to my first love.”
The soul’s journey can leave us wounded and weary, discouraged and doubting, desperately needing a fellow pilgrim not only to show us the way, but to make the way seem so tantalizing, so delicious, that we would choose it though all the legions of hell come against us.
That fellow pilgrim called to me today. He called to me from 55 AD, his words beckoning me to have the courage to lay down my self-inflicted cross for something … simple.
Rather than becoming jaded with life’s disappointments, bitter from betrayals, spiritually out-of-breath from the sufferings God had brought him through, he writes …
“But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3).
The Simplicity
of Devotion
to Jesus.
Do we dare to even believe it’s possible?