A Past Story, Relevant To The Future

As I have continued reading through, thinking, and chewing on the book "Worldliness" edited by C.J. Mahaney I have found a story that the author, Dave Harvey, points out  is a story about what can happen if we are "set free from the chains of covetousness and materialism." I think that this is totally relevant to world we are living in today if not more so important in the world we are living in today.

January 5, 1976, was a day that neither I nor my wife will soon forget. It was the dead of winter in Dallas, Texas, and as the sun set the temperature plummeted to well below the freezing mark. I was in my third year of seminary studies and was up late reading.

"Fire!" The word rang out on that cold night with frightening urgency, bringing me out of my chair and into the parking lot of our apartment complex. There it was. Only three doors away a fire was raging.

My first reaction was to awaken Ann and get her to safety. By the time she had escaped and we had moved our car away from danger, the fire department arrived and cordoned off the entire complex. In doing so they shattered any hope I had of rushing back inside to save something of our possessions.

It was there in the parking lot at 11:00 p.m., in sub-freezing cold, that I learned an important lesson about myself. The flames did more than simply light up the cold Texas sky. They shone ablaze in my heart as well, dispelling the darkness of sin's deceit. While mournfully contemplating what would surely be the loss of all earthly possessions, it suddenly struck me how attached I had become to material things. My sinful dependence on earthly goods was exposed as I envisioned a future without clothes, without furniture, and worst of all, without theology books. I was shamed by the painful realization that my happiness was so closely tied up with what I owned.

We frequently talk about Christ being all-sufficient, but I fear that it has become little more than a theological cliché. Though I had often affirmed this truth, I never really knew that Jesus was enough, until He was all that I had left. To be sure, I had my health; and my wife was safe. But in one chilling moment in 1976 it suddenly clicked: Jesus is not only necessary, He is enough.