Dear Lord, I will try by Your help to live the simple life. Kierkegaard said the pure life was the single life, willing one thing. Distraction is my enemy, and the world’s function is to distract me. Jesus teaches me to have a “single eye,” which I understand to be an eye fixed on a single goal or object. Purity is allowing no distractions. There is a carelessness about the simple life. It allows for stead-fastness and concentration.
The longer I live the more I realize that the Kingdom of Heaven must be “taken by force.” To enter the Kingdom is the easiest thing of all, but to let the Kingdom enter me is the most difficult. Why did Jesus call John the Baptist one of the greatest? I think it was because of his single-mindedness. John did not know diversion. He was like an arrow.
Some things I do in the Christian life are effortless—preach a sermon, lead a soul to Christ, write an article. Other things—vastly more important—are so difficult they command my whole strength and time—learn about God, know God, imitate and obey God. Those are the abiding things, like faith, hope, and love.
God, You never told me how hard the way was. You let me find that out for myself. If I had known, I never would have followed. But having begun, I cannot turn back. That backward road leads to nowhere and to nothingness. To go forward is hard but it promises its reward. “That I may know Him” was Paul’s cry (Philippians 3:10). So it is mine. Life’s greatest reward is to know Him! The joy of the captured heart! There is no elation like that of knowing I am claimed, I am included, I am purposed. The rejoicing of Luke 15 is not only over the lost one who has been saved, but also the saved one who has been reclaimed.
“But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:62).
Daily with the King 