Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Often in our spiritual journey it feels like we go a long way down the road and wind up back at the same place we started. It sometimes feels like we are going around in circles. There are times we do go around in circles, however in some instances it is not that we are going around in circles, it is going back to the one thing that is necessary.
As believers we have the Great Commandment to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and the Great Commission to share His love with the world. One has to do with loving Him and the other has to do with serving Him and His purposes. Heidi Baker calls the Great Commandment passion, and the Great Commission compassion. Both are vital to our spiritual lives on this earth, however Jesus made His priority for us clear. He wants to have a loving relationship with us even more than He wants us to serve Him and His purposes. That is the one thing that is necessary and the thing that the Lord our Shepherd always brings us back to.
But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:41-42
Often in life, like Martha in the Bible, many things, even many good things, distract us and we start losing sight of the one necessary thing. This can and does happen to the most spiritual of us and can even happen to a very spiritual church (Rev. 2:4).
One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord And to meditate in His temple. Psalms 27:4
There is a key Jesus possesses; He calls it “the key of David”(Rev. 3:7). I believe He was telling us something in naming that particular key. David had such a passion for the living presence of the Lord and to have a perpetual enjoyment of God’s grace and glory (John 8:35). He knew all other blessings are included in this, so this is David’s one thing and the key to David’s life. The Tabernacle of David was an expression of this ruling desire of his life.
Like many of us, David would go down the road of life and get distracted, discouraged, and tired, but God would always bring David back to his one thing. At the end of David’s life he called himself “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Sam. 23:1), in other words, David saw his greatest achievement as being a worshipper, a real lover of God.
If you study the Tabernacle of David closely you will discover that David went to great lengths and expense to establish worship in the nation of Israel (I Chron. 15-17). Worship is the greatest activity we will do personally and corporately in heaven and on earth. It is the one necessary thing.
In this season we believe the Father is calling us to be even more intentional in pursuing the Great Commission. Compassion is the purpose of God. It is what He desires to see manifested in our lives. As we set our minds and hearts fully in that direction we should continually resolve to always be fully grounded in the one necessary thing. The Lord is now calling us to have the heart of Mary and the hands of Martha.
Many Blessings, BW