I have been crucified with
Christ… —Galatians 2:20
{CHAMBERS} “To become one with Jesus Christ, a person must be
willing not only to give up sin, but also to surrender his whole way of looking
at things. Being born again by the Spirit of God means that we must first be
willing to let go before we can grasp something else. The first thing we must
surrender is all of our pretense or deceit. […] Along each step of this
process, we will have to give up our claims to our rights to ourselves. Are we
willing to surrender our grasp on all that we possess, our desires, and
everything else in our lives? Are we ready to be identified with the death of
Jesus Christ?[…] If you are faced with the question of whether or not to
surrender, make a determination to go on through the crisis, surrendering all
that you have and all that you are to Him. And God will then equip you to do
all that He requires of you.”
{ELGIN} After we are born
again, as we live our new lives out, we are faced with the temptation to
continue in some of our old ways. You know the ones .. the ones that the Spirit
says to abandon, but our devotion to them keeps us from giving them up .. we
cling to them … perhaps even try to hide them from God, like Adam and Eve
thought they could hide behind the bushes when God came to see them. The problem is, eventually, we see those
things as acceptable Christian living .. but what we really done is compromised
our faith and hindered our relationship with the One that made being Christian
possible to begin with. The thing that
will help you examine your life .. if you are so inclined … is the Word of God
and the conviction of the Spirit that results.
But even then, when you see the Truth and are convicted in your heart
over your disobedience to that Truth, you are faced with a decision to yield to
it, confess and repent, or to continue in it.
The story about the rich young ruler in Jesus is told in Matthew 19,
Like 18, and Mark 10. It must be
significant, you think? Anyway .. this
guy had decided what it was that he needed to do to have eternal life, but
Jesus said “Sell all you have and give it to the poor.” In other words .. “you love the treasures of
this world more than you love God, give them up.” Maybe you are not rich … but what is it that
you love more than God? Nothing you say? What is it that you are still hanging
to that is contrary to the “right you know to do”.
Our faith requires constant
care and attention. There is song [Bless
Thou Fount] that goes “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart Lord, take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.” In the Army
there was a missile that could be fired from a Cobra Helicopter called a TOW
missile. TOW stands for Tube-Launched, Optically
Tracked, Wire Guided. Once you fired the
missile you had to track it – guide it – until it hit the target. Failure to do so meant you would miss the target. The next generation of missiles called Hellfire
missiles were “fire and forget”. Once
you fired them, they followed a laser to the target, you didn’t have to sit and
wait for the missile to hit the target. My point? Our faith is more like the TOW than the
Hellfire. We can’t just launch our faith
and then move on with life, our faith … your faith … requires constant
attention, like the TOW missile, until we hit our target which is Heaven. I am not suggesting that you are going to
lose your salvation … but you will miss the life God intends … and that should
matter to you. I want to encourage you to think about it and then
pray about it and then do something about it.
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