May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it. Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God. - Ephesians 3:19
What equipment do I need if I am going to serve the Lord, sir?” a young missionary recruit asked a veteran Christian. The old saint quickly re-plied, “Bent knees, wet eyes, and a broken heart!”
The bent knees were mentioned first. The hardest thing for a missionary to do is to remember to bend them, because there are so many holy and good substitutes! There is the sweet fellowship with other great missionaries. There is the edification of fellow national believers. There is the corporate time of prayer that the staff enjoys each day. There are family devotions around the breakfast table with the children. But the bent knees that lead to the wet eyes that result from a broken heart come from the isolation of the soul.
The most important transactions take place alone—absolutely alone! That is the time when you are able to comprehend, to really grasp what is the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of Christ.
One day Jesus looked out on a needy multitude and was moved with compassion (Matthew 14:14). The word moved could well be translated “convulsed.” That deep, deep love came from Christ’s time spent alone with his Father—with bent knees, wet eyes, and a broken heart!
Missionaries, of course, are not the only ones who need to practice bent knees! If a missionary is “an ordinary person called to do extraordinary things with very little help,” then that includes all of us!
For Further Study: Ephesians 3:14-21
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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