For if I [merely] preach the Gospel, that gives me no reason to boast, for I feel compelled of necessity to do it. Woe is me if I do not preach the glad tidings (the Gospel)! – 1 Corinthians 9:16, Amplified Bible (AMP)

“When you obey the call of Jesus Christ, the first thing that hits you is the pointlessness of the things you have to do”: the pointlessness, that is, of the things you have to do that are not tied directly to the call which Christ has given you. These words of Oswald Chambers, found in the December 2 entry of his work My Utmost For His Highest, grasp the whole meaning of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:16.

When Christ gives you a call, peace will elude you until you fully do what He has told you to do.  If you hold on to some vestige of your own plans, you will suffer constant spiritual unrest as the Holy Spirit points out to you that you are wasting your time on pointless endeavors. You can squelch the spiritual unrest for short periods of time, but you will have regular episodes of utter spiritual misery as God brings to mind your disobedience.

The reason we don’t jump on the opportunity to fully serve God is because total submission usually means we have to give up something we want.  We want convenience, money, power, fame, and self-gratification. God’s wants our total abandonment of self and our total dedication to His desires and to the needs of others. When these two worlds collide, we struggle to give up our world for Christ’s. Yet, if we could but see beyond the here and now and look at our present through the eyes of Eternity, we would realize that total submission to Christ is the only thing we WON’T regret when we look back on how we lived.

Whatever it is we are allowing to compete with Christ’s call, we should abandon it now. It is through complete obedience to God alone that true heart peace is found, and as long as we hold on to some vestige of what we think will grant us joy, we’ll be continually depressed by the pointlessness of our actions.

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