…come, follow Me. —Luke 18:22
“Where our individual desire
dies and sanctified surrender lives. One of the greatest hindrances in coming
to Jesus is the excuse of our own individual temperament. We make our
temperament and our natural desires barriers to coming to Jesus. Yet the first
thing we realize when we do come to Jesus is that He pays no attention
whatsoever to our natural desires. We have the idea that we can dedicate our
gifts to God. […] There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and
that is your right to yourself (see Romans 12:1). […] The one true mark of a
saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally surrendered
to Jesus Christ. […] A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his
circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained
surrender to Jesus. […] You will go out into the world reproducing the echo of
Christ’s “Come.” That is the result in every soul who has abandoned all and
come to Jesus.” CHAMBERS
Do you make excuses for your
sin nature? “Well, that is just the way that I am”, I have heard Christians say
when trying to justify why they behave in a certain way or respond to people in
a certain way. A way that is clearly
contrary to Spirit. What the person is
really saying is, this is something that is a part of me and it will not
change. Perhaps they have been trying to
change it. Perhaps not. Whatever the
case, we should not make excuses for those things that come from the flesh. (Galatians 5:19-21) Following Jesus means abandoning everything
that is part of our old nature. If we
are unkind toward others, that is not coming from the Spirit. If we speak harshly, in a hurtful way, that
is not from the Spirit. But you already
know that don’t you? Are you in a
situation, that is not a result of your sin, that you wish you were not
in? Do you remember the story of the
mount of transfiguration? (Luke 9:28-33) The disciples wanted to stay on the mountain,
but they had to go back to the valley.
They were not the ones who decided what was going to happen. They were following the One who decided
that. Yet, even then, Jesus was obedient
to the Father’s will, not His own. Where does God have you right now. Are you trusting in Him or trying to figure
out how you can find a better place? Be
obedient where you are, and trust God. I
am writing this encouragement to myself more than to you. My words come back to me. When we were in Mississippi after Katrina,
someone asked me if I liked being in Mississippi, in the middle of a disaster
area. After thinking about the question,
no one had asked me that before, I responded, “There is no better place than being in the center of
God’s will, geography has nothing to do with it. So, yes, I love being here.” God continues to take us to places that need
the light of Christ to shine. The
geography, the economy, the culture are irrelevant. The message, “Jesus Saves” is all that is
relevant. And He still does. CHARLEY
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