My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be
discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. —Hebrews 12:5
“It is very easy to grieve the Spirit of God; we do it by
despising the discipline of the Lord, or by becoming discouraged when He
rebukes us. … “Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19), and do not
despise Him when He says to you, in effect, “Don’t be blind on this point
anymore— you are not as far along spiritually as you thought you were. … We
begin to pout, become irritated with God, and then say, “Oh well, I can’t help
it. I prayed and things didn’t turn out right anyway. So I’m simply going to
give up on everything.” … Sanctification is not my idea of what I want God to
do for me— sanctification is God’s idea of what He wants to do for me. But He
has to get me into the state of mind and spirit where I will allow Him to
sanctify me completely, whatever the cost (see 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).” OSWALD
CHAMBERS
(Romans 8:29) “For
those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the
firstborn among many brothers.” So you
want to be like Jesus. You want to do
what Jesus would do. Really? For that to
happen you must go through the “fire”.
What fire? The fire of
sanctification. That is the process by
which God, the Father, conforms you into the likeness of Jesus, the One who was
obedient to the will of the Father, even to the Cross.
Very often, we are like Adam and Eve when it comes to our
sin. We try to hide in the bushes. Hoping,
that perhaps, God will not see us in our shame.
Too late! And when that happens, sin
I mean, the Holy Spirit will convict you of that sin. (John
16:7-11) “Unless I [Jesus] go away,
the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he
comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness
and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the
Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this
world now stands condemned.” Being convicted of your sin is not enjoyable, but
it is good. We are all in a constant
battle with our old nature .. our sinful nature. It rises up daily to dominate our thinking
and our doing. But we have an Advocate! We are sealed with the Holy Spirit on the day
of our rebirth. The Spirit not only established our new, spiritual nature in
Christ, but helps us live our new life.
Look, you may be able to hide your sin from man, but you cannot, ever,
hide your sin from God. God knows the
heart of man .. your heart.
So what to do? You
are not going to lose your salvation over it, but as Paul said (Romans 6:1-4) “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may
abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you
not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in
order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
we too might walk in newness of life.” Read
1 John 1:9 – yes, unless you have memorized it, you will have to look it
up. And then do what it says. CHARLEY
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