When I saw Him, I fell at His
feet as dead. —Revelation 1:17
“You experience this joy in
hopelessness, realizing that if you are ever to be raised up it must be by the
hand of God.[…] Whenever His hand is laid upon you, it gives inexpressible
peace and comfort, and the sense that “underneath are the everlasting arms”
(Deuteronomy 33:27), full of support, provision, comfort, and strength. And
once His touch comes, nothing at all can throw you into fear again. In the
midst of all His ascended glory, the Lord Jesus comes to speak to an
insignificant disciple, saying, “Do not be afraid” (Revelation 1:17). His
tenderness is inexpressibly sweet. Do I know Him like that?[…] I delight in knowing that there is something
in me which must fall prostrate before God when He reveals Himself to me, and
also in knowing that if I am ever to be raised up it must be by the hand of
God. God can do nothing for me until I recognize the limits of what is humanly
possible, allowing Him to do the impossible.”
CHAMBERS
What brought you to the point
where you knew that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life? The point where you acknowledged Him as Lord,
received the Holy Spirit as an act of faith. (Ephesians 2:8,9) Saved by grace and not by works. You knew that there was nothing you could do,
that Jesus was and is and ever will be the answer. Do you remember? It’s difficult to keep that fresh in your
mind. To rekindle the emotion of the
moment. The emotion that was a result of
your act of faith, and not the reason for your profession. If emotion and not faith is the seed of our
profession, there will be no fruit. For
someone to say, I have always been a Christian stands against (Romans 10:9) in that we must confess with
our mouths and believe in our hearts. We
may not remember the day, hour and minute, but we will remember the
moment. For someone to say “I don’t
remember when I did that”, is to say “I did not do that, I did it another way.”
There is a world of difference between being religious (go to church, say the
right things, read the Bible, do the right things, have a form of godliness)
and being a Christian. The difference is
Jesus. (Matthew 7:21-23) ““Not
everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but
only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to
me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name
drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew
you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”
We are saved by grace not
works. We are not saved because of our
good works. We do good works because we
are saved. Two people can do the same
thing, for one, there is spiritual power in the act, for the other, there is
not. The world sees no difference. And yet, there is. On the one hand a person does because they
have God’s favor because of Jesus, on the other the person does with the hope
that they somehow will find God’s favor without Jesus. We must understand and
accept the limits of our natural ability and embrace the limitlessness of our
super-natural ability in Christ. Bottom line, you need to stop trying harder
and start “faithing” harder. CHARLEY
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