Cracker Jack Hopes and Are You Dead Yet?

I can’t recall where I heard this story of a little girl who found a pretty ring in her box of Cracker Jacks. It was a plastic ring painted the color of silver and with a pink resin “gem.” How the little girl loved her ring. She would day dream about wearing it to her prom and on her wedding day and how she would never stop wearing it.

This little girl had a father who loved her very much. And as she was getting older, he decided he wanted to give her a real ring with a genuine diamond and platinum band. He came home one day and said, “honey, I want you to give me your ring.” The little girl was greatly alarmed; she did not want to give her most prized possession. Her father looked hurt and said, “don’t you trust me that I have something better for your?” But the little girl refused to give up her treasured ring. She preferred to hold onto her cheap plastic over a genuine jewel. Sure she trusted her father, but she couldn’t see what he had. So finally, the father showed her the diamond ring, but the girl still preferred the pink colored plastic “gem” to the white genuine diamond. She chose the cheap and worthless over the genuine and priceless.

Many of you may know where I am going with this. But we are like that little girl when it comes to how we relate to God. We won’t give up all those things that we are holding onto, all the things of this world that we treasure in our hearts. And I am not speaking of simply material things that we desire, but our hopes and dreams and goals – we treasure these in our hearts.

Basically, we are not interested in God’s promises of spiritual blessings and eternal rewards. Sure we want spiritual blessings, we want eternal rewards, but we are not willing to give up our love affair with the things of this world that hold our heart, that direct our priorities, that we strive for and are enamored with obtaining or achieving. We don’t want to give those things up in order to get God’s gifts.

I guess maybe we really don’t believe that what God has for us is more precious than those things which perish. Jesus says that if we wish to follow him with must daily choose to die to ourselves, to crucify our desires and to live for Him.

Matthew 16:24 “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

Matthew 10:38-39 “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.”

A handsome, popular young man married the love of his life and had a child when he went off to a dangerous mission field. He was betrayed and ultimately murdered by those people he went to reach. His wife stayed and continued to try to reach those lost people. Others thought it was foolish of him to risk so much, his life, his family and happiness. But in a journal entry he wrote, “He is not fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot loose.”

Anything you have or desire in this world, you can’t keep. What do you need to let go of so that you can grow in the spirit and power of Christ in your life and receive the precious gift of greater intimacy with God? What have you been unwilling to have pried from your hands to gain the precious hope that the Lord offers and realize the joy of your salvation?

Do you trust your Father?

Ephesians 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ”


Marc James - Surrender
"I'm singing you this song, I'm waiting at the cross"

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