What Can You Do Without Him?
I was recently reminded of a song I learned years ago:
Without Him I could do nothing
Without Him I’d surely fail
Without Him I would be drifting
Like a ship without a sail. (Lyrics: Mylon LeFervre)
But the sad truth is, most of us would sing it “Without Him I can do anything,” as if Jesus is some kind of cosmic killjoy who wants to ruin all our fun and keep us from doing what we want. We imagine that if we could do away with Him and what we think of as His burdensome demands, our lives would be so much better.
But then I think of what Paul said to the Epicureans and Stoics at the Areopagus. He points out the altar with an inscription “To an unknown God,” then He reminds them of just how much they owe to that God:
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” (Acts 17:24-28, emphasis added)
Did you get that? God made everything; “he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else;” and “in him we live and move and have our being.”
Not sure there’s much for us to do without Him, is there? I mean, if you can’t breathe, if you can’t move, I’m not sure you’ll get very far. So let’s go back to the song to get the bottom line here:
Jesus, O Jesus
Do you know Him today
Do not turn Him away
Jesus, O Jesus
Without Him how lost I would be!
That’s surely been my testimony. Is it yours?
