YOUR RIGHT ARM
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Matthew 5:30
I’m attached to my right arm. Literally. It’s my go-to, preferred arm in all that I do. Unless you’re left-handed, the same is probably true for you.
A few years ago my Aunt Caroline needed to make a choice with her right arm. Either she kept her arm and the cancer would continue to spread throughout her body, or she could allow surgeons to cut it off at the elbow and live. She chose the later. Cutting off her right arm literally saved her life.
The same is true for you and me spiritually. Jesus said, And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell (Matthew 5:30).
In his devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes, “Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that if it hinders you in following His precepts, then ‘cut it off.’ The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.”
Chambers reminds us that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. There is a time when even good things must be cut out of our lives if they deviate our eyes from being fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-2). He writes, “There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God you cannot do them.”
It’s perfectly legitimate to shop, to hang out with friends, to surf the Internet, to text or talk on the phone, to go on vacation, to remodel your house, etc. But if one or all of these things keep us from concentrating on God they need to go! We need to cut them out of our life!
Eugene Peterson puts it this way in The Message, And you have to chop off your right hand the moment you notice it raised threateningly. Better a bloody stump than your entire being discarded for good in the dump (Matthew 5:30, MSG).
Like me, maybe you’ve heard passionate people who really want something badly, say, “I’d give my right arm for ___________________ to happen.” Or, “I’d give my right arm if I could see ___________________.”
To feed the fire in our hearts, Jesus is asking us to give our right arm. Passionate disciples count the cost (Luke 14:26-27, 33) and cut out everything in their life that keeps them from loving God and zealously serving others.
PASSION Step: What seemingly good things need to be cut out of your life so you can be a passionate disciple of Christ?
It is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God’s sight than to appear
lovely to man’s eyes but lame to God’s.
Oswald Chambers
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