September 22, 2009 THE MISSIONARY’S MASTER

John 13:13 - Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am (KJV).
- You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am (ESV).

Typically when I quote the “verse-of-the-day” I use a translation I’m more comfortable with simply because I find that I can glean more insight from a translation that speaks to me in an English I’m more likely to use myself. But Chambers utilizes the specific wording of the KJV to make his point, so I’ve included it here. I struggle a bit with the word “master” – my mind immediately goes to the 19th century slave owner metering out cruel and unjust punishments for any perceived infraction, legitimate or not. Obviously this is not what God intends for this verse and it seems that “teacher” more accurately captures the relationship we are intended to understand, but that word doesn’t seem to capture the intensity of the relationship. Chambers clarifies this relationship perfectly:
To have a master means that there is one who knows me better than I know myself, one who is closer than a friend, one who fathoms the remotest abyss of my heart and satisfies it, one who has brought me into the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have a master is this and nothing less.
What a phenomenal revelation as to what role God seeks in our lives! He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves, he is closer to us than any friend we’ve ever known, he knows the innermost desires of our hearts and has the capacity to fulfill them. We have nothing to fear and nothing to worry about. God has confronted and resolved any issue we could possibly raise, real or imagined. THIS is the God we worship, and yet so many of us try to confine God to our perception of Him as a kindly (or not so kindly) man with flowing gray hair and a beard who is just standing around waiting for us to pay attention to Him when things in our lives have gone awry.

When we know God as He really is we can begin to understand His love for us and His desire for us to recognize the absolute necessity of a relationship with Him. That relationship comes with a call to obedience, though, and honestly, most of us just don’t like that word very much. The notion of being “told what to do” grates on some of us. We want to do things our own way. I’ve been the poster child for defending the chaos of my own life. For years I was absolutely determined to run the show myself, with nearly disastrous results and yet for some reason, I’d always bristle at the suggestion that perhaps I need to consider another plan – God’s plan, perhaps. Our pride tends to get in the way – the concept that we aren’t able to manage our own existence simply isn’t something we care to admit. And God lets us carry on in our own way, if that is what we really want. Chambers says:
Our Lord never enforces obedience; He does not take means to make me do what He wants. At certain times I wish God would master me and make me do the thing, but He will not; in other moods I wish He would leave me alone, but He does not.
Oh, how this bit speaks to me!! Sometimes I’ve found myself on my knees in frustration, just wishing God would have taken the reigns and moved me in the right direction supernaturally. And other times I’ve wished He would allow me to do what I might without invading my conscience with His words. “[His] yoke is easy, [His] burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). There IS a yoke, there IS a burden, but once we take on the burden of the Lord, we find that it is easier and lighter than the burdens of our own creation and I’ve found myself wondering why I wasted so much time fighting against it.

Chambers closes with a profound thought:
[Jesus] wants us in the relationship in which He is easily Master without our conscious knowledge of it, all we know is that we are His to obey.
After years of being married to a man I love dearly and deeply, I find that I do some things with him in mind without really thinking about it. When I plan meals for the week, I do so taking his favorites into consideration. When making plans, his schedule and feelings are always in the forefront of my mind. I don’t find myself consciously thinking “okay, you’re planning the grocery list. Think of your husband.” It just kind of happens. I’m not tooting my own horn for a wife of the year award (definitely not) but there are certain things that flow naturally out of the fact that I love him. This is the way it becomes with God. When we come to know the Father intimately and develop that relationship with him, our obedience to him flows naturally out of our love for Him. There will always be issues of temptation, we won’t suddenly become perfect, but we will find that many behaviors will become second nature to us simply because we have the Lord in our lives. We will call Him Master and Lord, because He is!!