They said to Him, "Rabbi…where are You staying?"
He said to them, "Come and see." —John 1:38-39
{CHAMBERS} “We stay
with Him a short time, only to wake up to our own realities of life. Our
self-interest rises up and our abiding with Him is past. Yet there is no
circumstance of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus. “You are Simon….You shall be called Cephas”
(John 1:42). God writes our new name only on those places in our lives where He
has erased our pride, self-sufficiency, and self-interest. […] When we are in
our best spiritual mood, you would think we were the highest quality saints.
But don’t dare look at us when we are not in that mood. A true disciple is one
who has his new name written all over him— self-interest, pride, and
self-sufficiency have been completely erased. Pride is the sin of making “self” our god. And some of us
today do this, not like the Pharisee, but like the tax collector (see Luke
18:9-14). […] You defy God to make you a
saint, as if to say, “I am too weak and hopeless and outside the reach of the
atonement by the Cross of Christ.” Why aren’t you a saint? It is either that
you do not want to be a saint, or that you do not believe that God can make you
into one. […] Put no conditions on your life— let Jesus be everything to you….”
{ELGIN} If Oswald Chambers is
describing you, there is nothing I can do for you. Well, like him, I can tell you what the right
is, but my words have no power to cause you to change your thinking or your ways. That is the job of the Holy Spirit, to bring spiritual
understanding to your spiritual-you, to bring conviction and
enlightenment. At that point, you must
step out in faith. There are so many people,
family, even that agree with the words that I say, but do nothing in response
to them. It is only when my words are
coupled with the Spirit of God and He pierces the heart of the hearer, does what
I say make an eternal difference in the life of the hearer. But the hearer must receive the truth,
repent, and follow Jesus. The parable of
the seeds is probably the best explanation of this spiritual phenomenon. (Matthew 13:18-23) “Listen then to
what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the
kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what
was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling
on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it
with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When
trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The
seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the
worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it
unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the
word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a
hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.””
I cannot see the heart of
a person, to know what kind of “soil” I am casting the seed, but that is not my
“job”. My job is to cast the seed. Where I have trouble is when I think my job
is more than that. That it is somehow my
fault that the soil is hard, rocky, or thorny.
It’s not. Each person is individually
accountable to God. A hard fact to
accept, especially when you are talking to a family member who you want
desperately to hear and understand. They must have a heart ready to accept the Truth.
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