ESTHER 4:16
“Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor
drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to

the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!”
General Charles Gordon served the British military conscientiously for many years in
China.
When the English government sought to reward him for his service, he declined all
monetary remuneration but accepted a gold medal on which were inscribed his name and a
record of his 31 engagements.
At his death, the medal was missing. Later it was learned that during a famine in
Manchester, he donated it to be melted and used to buy bread for the poor.
In his diary that day he wrote these words “The last and only thing that I had in this
world that I valued, I have given over to the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Esther, too, knew what it meant to give everything over to God even her life. If being
faithful to His calling meant she had to perish, she was willing. There was nothing that she would withhold from God’s service. Life itself was less
precious than the need to obey His will.
Others have followed in these same footsteps. Some had their lives spared, but others
were killed. The writer of Hebrews says, “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were
tempted, were slain with the sword.
They wandered about in sheep- skinsand goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
of whom the world was not worthy” (Heb. 11:37-38).
Giving your all to Jesus doesn’t make you a martyr; it makes you a faithful disciple.
Are you willing to give yourself and everything you possess to Jesus? Can you say with
the hymn writer, “All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give”? If you can trust Him
with your eternal soul, can you not trust Him with everything else you have, even your life?
WE CAN’T GIVE OUR ALL TO JESUS AND KEEP SOME FOR OURSELVES.
WOODROW KROLL
www.backtothebible.in