“Oh, magnify the Lord with me,
And let us exalt His name together.” Psalm 34:3………………….
If you have a car, or have ever been a passenger in a car, or seen a picture of a car’s interior, you’ll notice the so-called glove compartment. It’s the small enclosed area with the little door in front of the passenger seat where people usually stick their “important stuff”. En.oxforddictionaries.com says a glove compartment in a car is “a recess with a hinged door in the dashboard of a motor vehicle, used for storing small items.”
Some people keep it organized. Some use it all the time. Some never use it, or rarely. Some just stuff junk in there. Some put important stuff, and junk, in there, and get it all jumbled together. Once the door is closed, voila. Whatever you’ve stuffed inside there, organized or not, important or not or a mix of both, all of it is now safely enclosed until the next time you decide to open the door and stick your hand in there to fetch something out of it. If you’re anything like I am, you may stick a bunch of stuff in there and forget about it until once in a rare while you’re looking for something you can’t find and figure maybe that’s where it’s hiding. I believe you get the point. Now here comes the message.
Some of us have stuck the Lord Jesus Christ in the glove compartments of our lives. And this is no joke. No laughing matter. Nor is it intended in the least to be dishonoring and irreverent when it comes to the Lord. Instead, this is entirely serious, and comes with a powerful warning. Some of us who believe in Jesus Christ as Lord need to give careful consideration to the fact Jesus Christ is LORD, He is GOD, He is ALMIGHTY, He is FOREVER, HE is sovereign, He is SAVIOR, He is HEALER, He is MASTER, He is FATHER, He is REDEEMER, He is DELIVERER, He is AWESOME, He is GLORIOUS, and on and on. Christ’s followers are not to just merely believe in Him intellectually, but to consecrate their lives to Him, to literally live for Him, to live by God’s Word through faith in Christ for God’s glory. But if some of us look honestly at our hearts, and our lives, including our appointment books and calendars, if we look at our thoughts, our choices and decisions, our actions, our priorities, etc., the truth is we have for all intents and purposes crammed Jesus Christ into the glove compartment of our lives to take out of there if and when we please, sometimes for no other reason than guilt and obligation, tradition and religion, and then to stuff Him back in there for the next time we remember Him or have Him scheduled for a dutiful appointment time with Him.
For years, I did exactly this. I called Jesus Lord, but in no way, shape, or form, did I live my life accordingly. Following Jesus is a WAY OF LIFE, a LIFESTYLE, a life of commitedness and devotedness to Christ as LORD OF OUR LIVES. If we find when we examine ourselves that we have done little if nothing more than shove Him into the glove compartments of our lives, we need to repent. We need to bow down before God almighty, seek and receive His forgiveness, and from henceforth live to exalt and magnify, to love and honor and adore, to revere and obey and serve, to praise and worship, to enjoy and commune with, to live in fellowship now and forever with THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. He does not belong smooshed into the glove compartments of our hearts and lives. He should be, and must be, the greatest love, and the highest priority, of our entire lives forevermore! For He is LORD!