Saturday, November 10, 2012

Bought With A Price

My Utmost For His Highest
 

As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.
 
I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”’ CHAMBERS
 
On many occasions, I have heard volunteers to say, “Being here, [Mississippi – Haiti} I realize that God has a greater purpose in my life, if only I did not have these other responsibilities [ meaning that prevent me from doing what God is calling me to do].” At times, not doing what you know God has called you to do can seem so … noble.  I have all of these debts, my family would miss me or us (if you have a wife and children), my job … and then there is what I can’t see .. I can’t see how we would live, I can’t see how I could get out from under the house and cars we owe money on … I can’t see how it could possibly work out.
 
Not everyone is called to leave where they are in life, but we are all called to leave our devotion to our natural life and to live for God.  Even if you work in a factory your whole life and live in the same house … go to the same church … you are not your own .. you have been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20) … Galatians 2:20  [you] have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer [you] who live, but Christ lives in [you]; and the life which [you] now live in the flesh [you] live by faith in the Son of God, who loved [you] and gave Himself for [you].
 
Do you live in that awareness?  Or is that something like .. I have green eyes, but that does not really affect what I look at with my eyes.  Being a Christian is not like have a physical attribute.  It is who you are ..  a new creation … (2 Corinthians 5:17) and everything that you think , say, and do should flow from that reality.
 
A lot to think about … What has God been saying to you?  And what have you and your heart been saying back to Him?
 
Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)

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