Slipshod?

"You no more need a holiday from spiritual concentration than your heart needs a holiday from beating. You cannot have a moral holiday and remain moral, nor can you have a spiritual holiday and remain spiritual.

God wants you to be entirely His, and this means that you have to watch to keep yourself fit."
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"The only way to know the strength of God is to take the yoke of Jesus upon us and learn of Him... No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness. If you have the whine in you, kick it out ruthlessly. It is a positive crime to be weak in God's strength."
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"If we undertake work for God and get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility will be overwhelmingly crushing; BUT if we roll back on God that which He has put upon us, He takes away the sense of responsbility by bringing in the realization of Himself.

Commit to God "that He hath given thee"; not fling it off, but put it over on to Him and yourself with it, and the burden is lightened by the sense of companionship."


Oswald Chambers
My Utmost for His Highest

Turning Our Natural Life Into A Spritual Life

Even after so many years of being an active part of the New Testament church of Jesus Christ and a surrendered daughter to my understanding of His will and ways, I am still caught off guard at times by the multitude of views Christians have toward God and His character. The one that probably hurts my daughter-heart the most (as it would hurt my heart if someone maligned my earthly father) is when well-meaning and sincere Christians choose to believe it is in God's will for us to suffer sickness, disease, poverty, and even early death... and so many other earthbound tragedies. I believe the Bible clearly lays out that all the aforementioned were under the curse of the law and I think we all agree that Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law.

Does that mean these things never happen to us? Absolutely not. We can't escape the fact that we live in a fallen world. But what it does mean is that when I know something is NOT THE WILL OF GOD, then I can shore up my faith in WHAT IS THE WILL OF GOD which gives me munition for the battle when these things do come. I'm not battling God who some believe orchestrates these things in order to make me stronger. Usually when these things come it is a result of the natural course of this natural world we live in temporarily. The only way I come out stronger on the other side of a battle is if I know how to stand against these things in this world and THAT is what develops my character and deepens my trust in God who is my Provider, my Healer, my Supplier, my Peace, my Righteousness, my Authority, my Shepherd, my Strength, my Grace, my Merciful Redeemer... and on it goes.

Now if I believe these trials of ordinary life come from God, I wouldn't be so inclined to battle them to victory because I would want to glory in them if they came from God and let them run their course and just allow whatever comes to have its way... after all if it's God's will why would I try to stop it? [Side note: I would insert here that if it is the trials of life that automatically make you strong, I'm wondering why we don't have more churches loaded with increasingly very steadfast and mature Christians ... to the contrary... there are the few ... the remnant in the church who are truly full of joy, full of victory in Jesus, full of knowing who they are in Christ and ready to take on any battle that comes their way.]

In my view, this way of thinking exalts itself against the knowledge God has given us in the Bible in order to overcome evil, to overcome sin, to overcome the results of sin, to overcome the god of this world... who has blinded the eyes of unbelievers...

Let's not let him blind our eyes as well.

Let's be diligent to let the ransom that Jesus paid for all mankind to be sufficient for us believing Christians. Our job is to preach the gospel, live right, do good, and be a witness to the glorious personal fellowship we enjoy with our Lord Jesus Christ.

"Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God." 2 Corinthians 10:5

***Deliverance from sin is not deliverance from human nature. There are things in human nature … which the saint has to destroy by neglect…

It is only when God has altered our disposition and we have entered into the experience of sanctification that the fight begins. The warfare is not against sin; we can never fight against sin: Jesus Christ deals with sin in Redemption. The conflict is along the line of turning our natural life into a spiritual life, and this is never done easily...

It is done only by a series of moral choices.

God does not make us holy in the sense of character; He makes us holy in the sense of innocence, and we have to turn that innocence into holy character by a series of moral choices. These choices are continually in antagonism to the entrenchments of our natural life, the things which erect themselves as ramparts against the knowledge of God. We can either go back and make ourselves of no account in the Kingdom of God, or we can determinedly demolish these things and let Jesus bring another son to glory. ***

***excerpts from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (emphasis mine)