During the civil war two brothers joined the army on opposite sides. As the war continued, they found themselves advancing against each other firing one shot after another. One of them was shot and laid wounded crying out for help. The other brother heard him, and after making several attempts to ignore him, he ran to him pick him up; with bullets flying everywhere he took him to safety. If he hadn’t done this his brother would have bled to death. They continued to argue about the war, and helped to supply ammunition to each side, but they decided never to fight each other again because the blood that made them brothers was more important than the reason for the civil war.
Many of us have many things that we are committed to, and therefore give a lot of time to their development, but these things such as making money, being involved in community or political projects, getting more exercise, even our family development, should never become more important than continually experiencing the blood of Jesus Christ that set us free from the power of sin, and gave us a new life. We can still give time to a variety of things, but not at the expense of the continual development of Christ in our lives, because “if God is for us who can stand against us.” (Romans 8:31).
When our relationship grows stronger in Christ, we will have continued peace, and better insight about everything we are involved in (Gal. 5:22-26; Phil. 1:9-11; Col. 1:9-11). Satan keeps us busy fighting over a lot of things so that we blame our lack of peace and joy on Christ. We end up dying on the inside rather than experiencing the joy of our new life in Christ from the inside out (Luke 8:14). What we need never neglect seeking Christ first, “and all these things will be added unto to us.” (Matt. 6:33).
“Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy — meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:8-9; NKJV)
