How To Keep The Spiritual Fire Burning

My Utmost For His Highest

 

‘If Jesus Christ is going to regenerate me, what is the problem He faces? It is simply this— I have a heredity in which I had no say or decision; I am not holy, nor am I likely to be; and if all Jesus Christ can do is tell me that I must be holy, His teaching only causes me to despair. But if Jesus Christ is truly a regenerator, someone who can put His own heredity of holiness into me, then I can begin to see what He means when He says that I have to be holy. Redemption means that Jesus Christ can put into anyone the hereditary nature that was in Himself, and all the standards He gives us are based on that nature— His teaching is meant to be applied to the life which He puts within us. The proper action on my part is simply to agree with God’s verdict on sin as judged on the Cross of Christ.  […] But I must get to that point. God cannot put into me, the responsible moral person that I am, the nature that was in Jesus Christ unless I am aware of my need for it.’ CHAMBERS

 

I just doesn’t happen.  The change in our lives, I mean.  Galatians 2:20 says “I have been crucified with Christ, yet it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.  And the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  If we don’t work intentionally on our relationship with Jesus, just like other people you have known over the years, you will drift apart, and one day, you might even stop thinking about Him.  Sound impossible?  It is very possible. I am not saying you stop going to church, but you might.  I am not saying you will stop reading your Bible, but you might.  I am not saying that you will stop praying, but you might.  I am not saying you will stop hanging out with people of faith and associate primarily with people who are lost, but you might.  (We are supposed to be salt and light to the lost, not indistinguishable from them.  If someone watched your life and what you do, listened to your speech . .would they know that you are Christian?) The Spiritual fire that once burned so intensely can become but a dying ember.  It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, day by day.

 

Have you ever said “I wonder whatever happened to (fill in the blank)?  Just the other day, I was thinking about some good friends that Martie and I had in past years.  We loved them and they loved us.  Now, we don’t know where they are or how to contact them.  How did that happen?  It happened because we stopped working at the relationship.  We allowed it to die through neglect.

 

We have been called to a new life.  But a temptation is always to abandon it. To let it slide.  To not do what the Spirit is prompting you to do.  So I want to encourage you to be careful.

 

Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)