Pinnacle Reason for Everything

For the Love of God

Ken

Human freedom and independence are often advanced as the driving reason to motivate humans to achieve anything. For a disciple, love for God is the pinnacle reason to do everything. “And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2 NET). When given a choice between freedom and love for God, we know our preference. There is a story about two devout Moravian Christians, Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann, who chose to sell themselves into slavery to bring the Gospel to the African slaves of the islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix in the Danish West Indies (1732). As the ship departed from the docks to carry them to the West Indies, the missionaries called out to their loved ones on the docks, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His Suffering!” They successfully established a mission, baptized converts, and returned — Dober remaining in Europe and Nitschmann accompanied John Wesley to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (America).