What's Really Yours?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. “ – (John 1:1-3)

Sometimes I forget that God owns everything, and that means everything I experience was created by Him, and comes into my life after first passing through His hands.

Since Jesus made everything, everything belongs to Him. Saturn is his. China is his. Every swordfish on earth is his. Every square inch of moon dust belongs to him, and the moon itself. Every panda bear. Every star in the Universe. Every square inch of everything. It all belongs to God. Absolutely nothing that you and I can see or conceive of exists apart from Christ, and since He made it, it’s His alone.

“What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” – (1 Cor. 4:7)

When we forget that everything belongs to God, we can become selfish. We start to believe that the things that are in our care belong to us, as if we created them ourselves. We start to think that God only deserves 10 percent of our money, for example, when obviously He deserves all of it. We start to think that God deserves only one day each week for us to spend thinking about Him and talking to Him instead of realizing that every breath belongs to Him and that our entire lives depend upon Him.

“For in him (Jesus) all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” – (Colossians 1:16-17)

Without Jesus there would be no planet, no solar system, no atmosphere, no water, no food to eat, no oxygen, no photosynthesis.

Jesus is more than our Savior. He is more than our Lord. He is the creator of the Universe. He deserves all we can give Him, and even if we do give everything we have to Him, all we will have done is to give back to Him the very things He owns already.

Do you know the one thing that Jesus wants most of all? It’s you. Your heart. Your time. Your love, freely given to Him. He wants that one part of yourself that you’ve been holding back from Him. You know what it is. He wants that most of all because He loves you and He knows that once you let go of that He can put something into your heart that is more glorious and wonderful than you could ever imagine. Something that you can really call your own – Himself.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” – (Ephesians 3:16-19)

How could you not love a God who would rather die than live without you? Who has already emptied Himself of everything in order to give you all of Himself? This is a creator who loves us until it hurts. Until it kills Him.  

Thank you, Jesus, that we are rich in all the things that matter – and rich in many other ways that do not.

-kg

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“All I see, all I’ve known, all I touch, all I own, first came through your hands like grains of golden sand."