"…my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death." —Philippians 1:20
“We will all feel very much ashamed if we do not yield to Jesus the areas of our lives He has asked us to yield to Him. It’s as if Paul were saying, “My determined purpose is to be my utmost for His highest— my best for His glory.” To reach that level of determination is a matter of the will, not of debate or of reasoning. It is absolute and irrevocable surrender of the will at that point. An undue amount of thought and consideration for ourselves is what keeps us from making that decision, although we cover it up with the pretense that it is others we are considering. When we think seriously about what it will cost others if we obey the call of Jesus, we tell God He doesn’t know what our obedience will mean. Keep to the point— He does know. Shut out every other thought and keep yourself before God in this one thing only— my utmost for His highest. I am determined to be absolutely and entirely for Him and Him alone.” CHAMBERS
The drive that is in you to protect yourself is called self-preservation. Dr. Abraham Maslow, a famous psychologist, theorized that after meeting the basic physiological needs, like breathing, food, and water, safety was the next most important motivation in humans. So, it is not unnatural that when faced with difficulties in your natural life, that your first impulse is to protect yourself. I mean, if you don’t who will? Glad you asked. We must be careful that we don’t separate our natural lives from our Spiritual lives. In other words, when we are facing problems .. doesn’t matter what they are .. do we turn within for solutions or do we look to God.
When I learned to fly helicopters, I was taught emergency procedures. What to do when something bad happened. When something bad happened was not the time to think about what I was going to do. Sometimes you only have seconds to react. It is certainly not the time to suck your thumb and cry for your mommy! To survive in an emergency, you had to follow the procedures that had been proven. And so it is with life. Think of the Word of God has our operators manual for life. That manual tells us how to live and what to do in case of emergencies. The one thing that God has not told us to do in an emergency is to trust in our own ability. But, we can become so preoccupied with self-preservation that many times we don’t do what we are supposed to do which is trust in the Lord. Let me tell you something you already know. When you do that, things do not get better. I never experienced an engine failure in a helicopter, but I knew what to do in the event that it happened. I was trained to the point that I didn’t have to think about it … I trusted that what was written was true and I followed the emergency procedures, almost instinctively. I had to be ready. And so do you. Trusting God is something that you do because of your relationship with Him. Because you a disciple of Jesus. Joshua 1:9 says to meditate on the Word, obey the Word, and then you will be successful. No matter what comes your way … first turn to God and not yourself. Someone once said, the definition of insanity is doing something over and over and expecting a different outcome. To trust in ourselves and not God is insanity. ELGIN
Bondye Beni Ou (God Bless You)
Charley Elgin
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