Gospel of John Student Devotionalනියැදිය

My dad has always told me that the easiest thing to do is think about yourself. Even though he has said this to me since I was little, I haven’t fully grasped the concept until recent years. Oftentimes, “thinking of yourself” doesn’t entail what it literally sounds like, thoughts of you. Rather, it is about a posture that we tend to adopt. It is so easy for us to get caught up in the mentality that we are deserving of something, that we should get something because it’s “fair.” But, the hardest pill for us to swallow as Christians is this: We don’t really deserve anything.

Now, before you call me crazy, let me explain. Nothing that we have been given on this Earth is because we are “deserving” of it, but rather because God has given “it” to us. So, rather than thinking of what we should get, we need to recognize what we have already been given. God didn’t have to give us anything. It was out of His goodness and love that we get to experience the incredible things He has to offer us, both in this life and beyond. And the greatest gift He ever sent to us was that of salvation through Jesus.

John 19:1-20:18 tells us the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection. If you have been going to church for a while or were raised as Christian, you most likely have heard this story several times. And sadly, I think that we have failed to grasp the weight of this scripture. It’s often something we gloss over when we say that we’re saved by Christ. But when you really sit down and read it, the weight of it is overbearing. Jesus, this perfect, incredible Son of God, came down here to give us what we could never earn, never deserve, never buy: God’s eternal mercy and grace. Jesus wasn’t just nailed to a cross. He faced years of terrible treatment. He was forced to endure discrimination and torture that we can’t even fathom. And He did it all so we could be forgiven. There was nothing we did, nothing we would do, and nothing we could do that made us deserve his sacrifice.

The world we live in today makes us think that we always deserve more. We deserve that new phone, we deserve that college acceptance, we deserve that job. Instead of being in this headspace, what if we shifted it so that everything that we receive is a gift? If we can adopt a posture of gratitude instead of envy or want, can you imagine how beautiful life could look? We were given the gift of mercy before we were even born, and that in and of itself is the most incredible thing we could ever receive. There is nothing in this life that is more meaningful than salvation. If we can shift our mindset, we can start to recognize just how good our God is. The more time we spend with Him and the less connected we become to the world, we can start to scratch the surface of His awesome nature.