21 August 2007 Devotion for Today "Limits" Philippians 2:5-8

21 August 2007  Devotion for Today  “Limits”  Philippians 2:5-8

            A typical living room in your house 15x15, can only hold so much furniture.  We might put 10 pieces of furniture in there.  Sofa, a love seat.  A couple of chairs,  end tables, coffee tables, TV set and stereo cabinet or entertainment center.  By this time, your living room’s getting pretty full, isn’t it?  Some might try to add 10 more and get a big shelf unit in there.  You might be able to go 20 pieces, but your’e not going to be able to put 100 pieces in there and still expect to sit in your living room with some modicum of comfort and watch TV- you can’t do it.   Imagine trying to watch “Wheel of Fortune” with Aunt Sally’s credenza sitting in the middle of your living room!

 You might be in good enough condition to swim the English Channel- several have done it. But you’re not going to be able to swim the Pacific Ocean.  You might be able to get buy on 4 hours sleep for a few nights, or go 1 maybe 2 nights without any sleep at all.  But sooner or later you are going to break the camel’s back!  Once we exceed those physical margins, fatigue sets in, followed quickly by exhaustion, and then collapse.  If you run, for example, or swim, you can continue to break old records nearly every year.  Runners keep running faster and swimmers keep swimming faster.  But sooner or later they are going to reach a saturation point.  We can’t run a mile in a second I don’t care how fast you are.    So it is in life.  You and I are not infinite. God is, but we’re not.  The day does not have more than 24 hours.  We do not have in inexhaustible source of human energy.  As I said last week, we can’t be running on the fumes.  Some will retort and use what Paul said in Philippians 4:13  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!”  That might be so, but does this mean that you can fly?  There is an obvious limitation to this verse- and that is, we can do all the things Christ wants us to do.  Obviously Christ you go six months without eating?  We need to remember that Jesus emptied himself of much of his divine power and submitted to our human limitations- if He didn’t, we wouldn’t have read where He was sleeping in the back of the boat, or that He needed to eat, etc.  I find it interesting that while Jesus healed a lot of sick people, He did not heal everybody, or get rid of every case of leprosy in Israel.  It is God the Creator who made limits, and it is the same God who placed them within us for our own protection.  That is why He placed the Tree of Life in the Garden and forbade us to eat of it.  When we did, we exceeded our margins.  When we exceed our limits today, we still do so at our peril..

            In Philippians 2 Paul takes his lead from this attitude: Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

            Even Christ had some limitations- limitations He obviously put on Himself.  We are born with limitations and the sooner that we face that fact, the better off we will be. 

None of us can do everything.  None of us can live long enough to accomplish what we would like to do.  But the way that we glorify God is that we do the best we can do with what we have and leave the results with Him, and accept in the mind of Christ what we are not able to do and be content in that.

            Have a blessed day!

 

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

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