What/Where is my Portion?

We’ve all heard ‘The Parable of the Lost Son” Luke 15:11-31 NIV.

Or as I call it, the story of Life and Death.

So many of us feel the way that the older son felt.  We did the right thing, followed the right path, worked hard, lost out on opportunities in life and was barely rewarded, yet someone who does the complete opposite, enjoys the world to their fullest desire and when life takes a turn for the worst, here they are being welcomed with open arms to receive help and all the same promises as you. Kind of tough to swallow, huh!

Here’s the kicker, are you willing to gamble your portion in choosing death over life? Well, that’s what they did.

That’s the gamble that you take in choosing to take your portion. When you take something, you are separating it from the whole for the purpose of self.  With God, we really don’t have a Portion, we have it all, everything. “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.” Luke 15:31 NIV.  So if everything is ours, why wouldn’t we want to work to take care of it, why shouldn’t we maintain it.

The bible says in Luke 15:17 NIV that the younger son “…came to his senses…”.  He got up and went back to his father.  Now think; how many sons and daughters out there in the world don’t come to their senses.  How many of them are, entrapped, confined, and die in sin. Romans 1:28 KJV says “…God gave them over to a reprobate mind…”. The bible did not say that God will give them over, it said he gave them over. We don’t have to wait for Judgement day; the bible says “The wrath of God is being revealed…” Romans 1:18 and we see it every day.

Jesus is the way the truth and the life (John 14:6). So on the flipside,  when we don’t follow Christ, we are lost, we are wrong and we are basically the walking dead.

In Luke 9:59-60 KJV, Jesus said to a man “Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”  Jesus is life, and the dead are those without Christ.  So basically he was telling this man, don’t leave your portion (life) to go with those who are dead to bury their dead. Those who are dead in Christ are not considered dead but rather asleep. So we “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” 1 Thes 4:13-14 NIV.

The father said “…We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Luke 15:32 NIV.

My prayer: Lord I believe that you are the way, the truth, and the life and that you are my Portion.  Everything that belongs to you, belongs to me also.  Like the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), I do not believe that you are unfair.  My Portion is the whole pie, no matter when I came to you. I am grateful that you have given me the grace to come to my senses now before I was consumed by my own desires and given over to a reprobate mind. Death is no place for me and neither is your wrath. I choose life.

G.M.