Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.(Psalm 51:6 – ESV)
Your effectiveness as a Christian, in prayer and in all of life, is directly tied to your intimate relationship with Christ. The more intimate, the more sanctified, and the way to know Christ intimately is to know His sacrifice. The more we experientially sacrifice, the more intimately we know Him.
However, I am talking about sacrifice on His terms, not ours. That would include our obedience, because it is to sacrifice our fleshly desires. Hebrews 12:2 – it was for the joy of the sacrifice that Jesus gave His life, and He had to come to that place in Gethsemane, honestly pleading, and that is where we must start too. Don’t just give up something if there is no joy in it, first go to God and plead with Him, tell Him the truth about why you don’t want to give something up, and be willing to let Him make you into a joyfully sacrificial Christian.
Submit to the Guiding Hand instead of always opposing where it is leading. You know God is leading you to do away with that sin, but you want to save it till some later time when you think you will be stronger, more ready. By doing that you are opposing God. Instead you must learn submission by allowing yourself to be influenced by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body when and while they appear before you, in those moments.
Submit to the Guiding Hand instead of always opposing where it is leading. You know God is leading you to do away with that sin, but you want to save it till some later time when you think you will be stronger, more ready. By doing that you are opposing God. Instead you must learn submission by allowing yourself to be influenced by the Spirit, putting to death the deeds of the body when and while they appear before you, in those moments.
It is not your well mapped out battle plan that gets the job done, but submitting to God’s plan as revealed in time by experience and circumstance presenting themselves to you, and then the question is do you have faith? Yes we are to be willing and intentional about killing off sin, but we must remember, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the LORD” (Proverbs 21:31), and He is the one who brings us to battle.
4 comments:
Amen. Teach us Lord.
Thank you Lord for this understanding and opening up the Truth in our lives.
"You know God is leading you to do away with that sin, but you want to save it till some later time when you think you will be stronger, more ready."
How very true!!
Hello everyone. Sorry to report that our internet is down. We were away for the July 4th weekend and evidently had quite a storm. Our internet provider indicates saturday, July 12 as the earliest available date to repair our service. We are praying that they will somehow get to us sooner since JD has a wedding on saturday.
Hoping to be back very soon! Thank you for stopping by and please keep checking.
God bless you all!
We're back as of 9:30 am July 9, 2008...
Post a Comment