To Encourage You

Luke 10:42 “. . . Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

I’m sure you’ve seen photos of the utter devastation hurricanes can bring.  When we observe such things one of the thoughts that sometimes come to mind is, “They’ve lost everything!”  Sometimes people even lose their lives. For those people, they lost more than their homes and their personal possessions. They truly did lose everything. 

As I thought about this, it occurred to me that everything we possess in this life can be lost.  We can look at the example of Job.  Here was a man who seemingly had everything. He was healthy, wealthy, and wise. He had a wonderful family. He was well respected. The Bible tells us that “he was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” As the title of one preacher’s popular book is titled, Job had “his best life now.”  But then this righteous man lost “everything.”  First, he lost his servants, then his livestock, then his children, and finally his health.  However, in the case of Job, “everything” didn’t mean “everything.”  You see, Job had one thing that could never be taken away from him.  It was the very same thing that Jesus was talking about in the verse above. It was that thing that Jesus called “the good portion.” The good portion was something that Mary possessed and, of that, Jesus said “it will not be taken away from her.” 

So, what was it that Job possessed? What was this thing that was “the good portion” that Mary had chosen and that would never be taken from her?  For both of these individuals, it was the same thing. For both Mary and Job, it was a personal relationship with their Creator.  When Job was tested, as all was lost, his perspective was expressed in the following words: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).  

How true those words are for every person on the face of the earth.  Everyone someday will “lose everything.”  We came into this world naked and we’ll leave it the same way.  All our money, all our relationships, our health, every physical thing that we’ve ever enjoyed in this life, will be taken away.  As the old saying goes, “You can’t take it with you.”  But so many people live as if they can. So many people go through life like Mary’s sister Martha in the account from which the words above from Luke 10 are taken, “anxious and troubled about many things.”  However, every physical thing, all those things with which we are consumed and worry about, up to and including our physical life, can be taken from us in a moment.  In fact, every physical thing will be taken from us in a moment, i.e., the moment we pass from this world. Yet, as Jesus tells us about Mary and as we know from the story of Job, there is one thing, and only one thing that, if we possess it, no one can ever take away from us.  And that one thing is a relationship with the Lord. 

In the verse above and in other places throughout God’s Word we are given the absolute certainty from God Himself that “whoever comes to Me I will never cast out” (John 6:37). Job had such a relationship with his Creator that he could, with great confidence, say in the midst of his immeasurable suffering, “Though He (i.e., God Himself) slay me, I will hope in Him” (Job 13:15).

Yet, we are warned in Scripture that there are many who think they have a relationship with God who do not. Jesus put it this way as He spoke about the final judgment: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:22-23).  What a shock that will be for those people. So, what is different between their “relationship” with Jesus, the one they had fancied was their “Lord,” and people like Job and Mary, to whom Jesus truly was their Lord? 

We see it in the account of Mary of whom Jesus spoke so warmly in the passage above. We see that as Jesus spoke these words, Mary was sitting at His feet, listening to Him speak.  Her attitude before Him was one of humility and submission. She loved Him. She demonstrated this in her choice to spend intimate time with Him.  She longed to hear what He had to say.  And surely, she was ready and willing to do anything He would have asked.  That’s the mark of one with a true relationship with Jesus, a relationship that will never be taken away from us. 

You see, for a person to say Jesus is their Lord, yet have no time to read His Word and no time to spend speaking to Him in prayer, those words ring hollow, for they are not telling the truth. For a person to say they believe in God, yet have no time for the Church, which is His very body, is to deceive oneself.  To say that we are Christians and yet have little time to study God’s Word to learn what Christ wants from us and therefore make no effort to either do what pleases him or to refrain from doing things which grieve Him, shows not that we know Him, but that we do not. But for those who know Him, who have this one thing that will never be taken away from them, they not only have a relationship with Him, but they have everything else. 

You see, the one who truly has a relationship with Jesus is a joint heir with Him of everything God will pour out for all eternity on those He loves (Romans 8:17). As Jesus said in the parable of the sower, “For to the one who has (i.e., the one who has a relationship with Him), more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Matthew 13:12).  And He also said this: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:19). 

Some people lose some or all of these things during their life, but everyone loses all of these things as they leave this life.  However, for those who, like Mary and like Job, have a loving, trusting relationship with Jesus, in the end, they will lose nothing. What an awesome truth this is!

May God help us, like Mary, to choose “the good portion” that will never be taken away, for it is only when we follow her example that the ever-present possibility that we can “lose everything,” including our very lives, loses all its power over us. As all believers have been told in these wonderful words from 1 Corinthians 15:55-56: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  It’s a victory that, though we lose everything, we never lose anything at all.