Randall Murphree

AFA Journal editor

August 2010 – Is your commitment focused on the great Christian causes you support? Your local church? The Fellowship of Christian Athletes? Gospel for Asia? AFA? Or is it focused on the Christ whom we claim to serve, the only One who can truly change our culture?

In June, I went to a Christian camp in a nearby state park. As a member of the team which planned the experience, I had been encouraged and motivated by other team members as we met to pray and prepare for the weekend. Even more importantly, their lives and their witness for Christ had dared me to turn a mirror on my own heart and analyze my walk with Christ.

On June 19, at the camp, a friend with me in the prayer room read aloud “Service of Passionate Devotion,” Oswald Chambers’ (1874-1917) daily entry from My Utmost for His Highest. Chambers’ pointed principle was that our devotion must be not to a cause, but to a Christ.

Chambers began with John 21:16: “Lovest thou Me? … Feed My sheep.” Then he had this to say:

Jesus did not say, “Make converts to your way of thinking, but look after My sheep, see that they get nourished in the knowledge of Me.” We count as service what we do in the way of Christian work; Jesus Christ calls service what we are to Him, not what we do for Him.

Discipleship is based on devotion to Jesus Christ, not on adherence to a belief or a creed. “If any man come to Me and hate not, ... he cannot be My disciple.” There is no argument and no compulsion, but simply, “If you would be My disciple, you must be devoted to Me.” A man touched by the Spirit of God suddenly says, “Now I see Who Jesus is,” and that is the source of devotion.

Today we have substituted creedal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many are devoted to causes and so few devoted to Jesus Christ. People do not want to be devoted to Jesus, but only to the cause He started. Jesus Christ is a source of deep offense to the educated mind of today that does not want Him in any other way than as a comrade. Our Lord’s first obedience was to the will of His Father, not to the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father.

If I am devoted to the cause of humanity only, I will soon be exhausted and come to the place where my love will falter; but if I love Jesus Christ personally and passionately, I can serve humanity though men treat me as a doormat. The secret of a disciple’s life is devotion to Jesus Christ, and the characteristic of the life is its unobtrusiveness. It is like a kernel of wheat, which falls into the ground and dies, but presently it will spring up and alter the whole landscape (John 12:24).

What conviction. What challenge. Where is my commitment focused – the cause or the Christ?