Canaan pt. 1

I had a conversation with someone the other day and it stirred something up in me. I have read a book called Maximized Manhood by Ed Cole. This book really spoke to me about the 5 sins that kept the Israelites out of the land of Canaan. Canaan is where God wanted the Israelites to live after they were delivered out of their bondage. I sometimes wonder about my on Canaan
1 Corinthians 10:9
nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents;NKJV
Page 27 When the crowds demanded that Christ come down from the cross, they tempted Him. Tempting Christ is demanding that God do what is contrary to His will or inconsistent with His character. Today, men still do the same by demanding that God provide some way of salvation other than the Cross. Lying and cheating in business and demanding that God bless and prosper the results is tempting Christ. Men and women pursuing promiscuity, though they know it is wrong; children rejecting the godly counsel of parents; congregations demanding the pastor build the church on social programs rather than the Word of God and prayer; believers wanting to enjoy the benefits of salvation and the pleasures of sin at the same time—all are tempting Christ.
It kept Israel from Canaan.
It keeps men from their Canaan today.
This one has always stuck out for me. My website for my business www.cchomeimprovements.com (this is not an advertisement) Says Honesty, Integrity, and Quality Workmanship this is how I treat my customers and it is how I treat my employees and subs. I have never put money in my pocket to avoid paying the taxes. If someone pays me cash. It goes in to my account. I could be audited by the IRS and everything is legitimate. The flip side to that is I never pay anyone without keeping a record. In other words, I never pay anyone under the table as some do. That is stealing. Seriously! Lord, would you bless my business, then turn around and pay an employee with cash so you don't have to pay the taxes or get paid cash for a big job and not report it. I love this one, you want the Lord to bless your marriage but, you go home and look at pornography. Lord please bless my finances, but you don't tithe. I think you get the point. Now before anyone thinks I am throwing stones I struggle in other areas of my life that are keeping me from my Canaan. The positive side is this, I believe the reason I never worry about my business. Even when I have down time is because I trust the Lord in this area of my life and I know He is going to provide. The problem is I need to carry this over into other areas of my life.
What is keeping you from your Canaan?
Lord I pray right now that you reveal yourself to those who are asking you this question right now. In Jesus name.

 

Rest

Hebrews 4:6-12
So God's rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted:

"Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts."

Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.NLT

Are you resting? Holy Spirit says, if we don't rest we will fall! When was the last time you rested? When was the last time you got away by yourself for a couple of days and rested? I don't mean away with your spouse I mean by yourself! Go to someone's cottage or a hotel and have the TV removed and just get alone and rest no phone to computer just rest.

 

Rest today

If you will ask chpt II

Chapter II

The Secret of the Sacred Simplicity of Prayer

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Matthew 26:41

These words were spoken in the supreme moment of our Lord's agony; we are immensely flippant if we forget that. No words our Lord ever spoke ought to weigh with us more than these words. We are dealing with the sacred simplicity of prayer. If prayer is not easy, we are wrong; if prayer is an effort, we are out of it. There is only one kind of person who can really pray, and that is the childlike saint, the simple, stupid, supernatural child of God; I do mean "stupid." Immediately you try to explain why God answers prayer on the ground of reason, it is nonsense; God answers prayer on the ground of Redemption and on no other ground. Let us never forget that our prayers are heard, not because we are in earnest, not because we suffer, but because Jesus suffered. It is because our Lord Jesus Christ went through the depths of agony to the last ebb in the Garden of Gethsemane, because He went through Calvary, that we have "boldness to enter into the holy place."

Let us take ourselves across Kedron to the Garden of Gethsemane. We can never fathom the agony in Gethsemane, but at least we need not mis-understand. This is not the agony of a man: this is the distress of God in Man, or rather the distress of God as Man. It is not human in any phase, it is fathomless to a human mind, but we have got several lines to go on so as not to mis-understand. Always beware of the tendency to think of our Lord as an extraordinary human being; He was not, He was God Incarnate.

The Line of the Undiscerned Word of Our Lord

Watch and pray . . .

"Tarry ye here, and watch with Me."Is my idea of prayer based on the keen watching that Jesus Christ asked of His disciples? He did not say, "pray for anything," or, "ask God for anything"; the whole of His attitude toward them was wrapped up in the words, "watch with Me." Our Lord did not say sentimental things or pious things about prayer He said practical and intensely real things, and this is one of them. This is a line of things that opens up nothing to us until it does, because we bring in our own ideas of prayer and do not take into account the Mastership of our Lord. Probably that is our biggest difficulty—that our Lord is not really Master. We use the phrase "Master," but we use it in a more or less pious way, we do not intend to make Him Master practically; we are much more familiar with the idea that Jesus is our Saviour, our Sanctifier, anything that puts Him in the relationship of a supernatural Comrade. We advocate anything that Jesus does, but we do not advocate Him.

(a) The Appropriate Place of Our Lord's Arranging

"Sit ye here, while I go yonder and pray . . ."It is customary, and in one sense quite right, to take our Lord as an example of how to pray, but in the fundamental sense He is not. The relationship we have to God is not the same as Jesus Christ's relationship to His Father—especially on this occasion; His is not a relationship: it is a Redemption. So until you are sure about our Lord's Redemption—"sit here, wait." People say, "Why do you waste your time in a Bible Training College? Fancy spending all your time studying the Bible! Think of the people who need to be looked after; think of the thousand and one things there are to do!" Well, they have to be done, but that is not the point. The point is, are we prepared for our Lord to say to us, "Sit ye here, while I go yonder"? Are we prepared to give due weight to the fact that we are not our own masters? Are we devotees to a cause or disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ? He said to the disciples, "Sit ye here"; if they had been like some of us they would have said, "No, it is absurd, we must go and do something."

The more we get into the atmosphere of the New Testament the more we discover the unfathomable and unhasting leisure of our Lord's life, no matter what His agony. The difficulty is that when we do what God wants us to do, our friends say, "It is all very well, but suppose we all did that!" Our Lord did not tell all the disciples to sit there while He prayed; He told only three of them. The point is that we must take the discerning of the haphazard arrangements of our lives from God. If once we accept the Lord Jesus Christ and the domination of His Lordship, then nothing happens by chance, because we know that God is ordering and engineering circumstances; the fuss has gone, the amateur providence has gone, the amateur disposer has gone, and we know that "all things work together for good to them that love God." If Jesus says, "Sit ye here, while I go yonder and pray," the only appropriate thing we can do is to sit there.

(b) The Appointed Place of Our Lord's Associates

"And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee . . ."Our Lord opened His sorrow to these three, as far as human beings could appreciate it. Peter may stand well for the phase of the first temptation that betook our Lord—the sensible, material side of things, for help and assistance. James may stand for the second temptation that betook our Lord—the intensely ritualistic; and John may stand for the last temptation—the temptation to compromise with everything in order to win, a great loving monopoly. These three men were taken and appointed by our Lord for one purpose—to see His agony. "Tarry ye here, and watch with Me." He did not put them there to go to sleep; He put them there to wait and watch. Remember, the twelve disciples were all He had; He knew one had gone to betray Him, and that Peter would shortly deny Him with oaths and curses, and that all of them would forsake Him and flee; but He took these three with Him to see the unveiling of His heart—and they slept for their own sorrow.

(c) The Autobiographic Place of Our Lord's Agony

". . . and began to be sorrowful and sore troubled."Our Lord said to these disciples what He never said to the others; in John 12:27, He said in soliloquy something similar ("Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say?"), but here He really said to these three, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Have we for one second watched Jesus pray? Have we ever understood why the Holy Ghost and our Lord Himself were so exceptionally careful about the recording of the agony in Gethsemane? This is not the agony of a man or a martyr; this is the agony of God as Man. It is God, as Man, going through the last lap of the supreme, supernatural Redemption of the human race. We ought to give much more time than we do—a great deal more time than we do—to brooding on the fundamental truths on which the Spirit of God works the simplicity of our Christian experience. The fundamental truths are—Redemption and the personal presence of the Holy Ghost, and these two are focused in one mighty Personality, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank God for the emphasis laid by the Pentecostal League of Prayer on the efficacy of the Holy Ghost to make experimentally real the Redemption of Jesus Christ in individual lives.

Remember, what makes prayer easy is not our wits or our understanding, but the tremendous agony of God in Redemption. A thing is worth just what it costs. Prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray. It cost God so much that a little child can pray. It cost God Almighty so much that anyone can pray. But it is time those of us who name His Name knew the secret of the cost, and the secret is here, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." These words open the door to the autobiography of our Lord's agony. We find the real key to Gethsemane in Matthew 4, which records the temptations of our Lord. Here they come again in a deeper and more appalling manner than ever before. We are not looking here (as we do when we deal with the temptations) at the type of temptation we have to go through; we are dealing here with the grappling of God as Man in the last reaches of historic Redemption.

"But these truths are so big." Why shouldn't they be? Have we to be fed with spooned meat all the time? Is it not time we paid more attention to what it cost God to make it possible for us to live a holy life? We talk about the difficulty of living a holy life; there is the absolute simple ease of Almighty God in living a holy life because it cost Him so much to make it possible. Beware of placing the emphasis on what prayer costs us; it cost God everything to make it possible for us to pray, Jesus did not say to these men, "agonise"; He said, "Watch with Me." Our Lord tried to lift the veil from before these disciples that they might see what He was going through. Think Who He was—the Son of God: "My soul"—the reasoning Mind of the Lord Jesus Christ—"is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with Me."

The Lure of Wrong Roads to the Kingdom

that ye enter not into temptation . . .

Whenever Jesus talked about His kingdom the disciples misinterpreted what He said to mean a material kingdom to be established on this earth; but Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews." And again He said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation . . . for lo! the kingdom of God is within you." The only way in which we can be saved from the lure of the wrong roads to the kingdom is by doing what our Master tells us, viz., "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." If we do not watch and pray we shall be led into temptation before we know where we are. "Howbeit when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" said Jesus. He will find faith in individual men and women, but the general organised form of the Christian Church has slipped almost wholesale on to wrong roads to the kingdom.

(a) The Material Road of Deliverance (Matthew 4:1-4)

"If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread" (Matthew 4:3). This temptation is profoundly human. If we could only find some means of curing everybody of disease, of feeding them and putting them on a good social basis what a marvellous thing it would be. That is the way we are being told that the kingdom of God is to be established on this earth. "We do not need any more of this talk about the Atonement, and the shedding of blood; what is needed to-day is to spend ourselves for others." That is the lure of the wrong road to the kingdom, and we cannot keep out of it if we forget to watch and pray. "Watch with Me," said Jesus; "mine is the only road to the kingdom." We have to continue with Him in His temptations. "Command that these stones become bread"—"satisfy Your own needs and the needs of men and You will get the kingship of men." Was Satan right? Read John 6:15, "When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force to make Him a king . . ." Why? He had just fed five thousand of them! yes, but we read that Jesus "departed again into a mountain Himself alone"; He would not be king at that price.

(b) The Mysterious Road of Devotion (Matthew 4:5-7)

Remember, we are dealing with our Lord's presentation of His own temptation; in the most sacred matters rely only on the Holy Ghost, trust no one else.

This temptation presents a wild reach of possibility—"You are the Son of God, do something supernatural that will stagger men, and the world will be at your feet." Was Satan right? Absolutely. Is there not a lure along that road springing up to-day more than ever? There are miraculous dealings which lure to destruction, the tongues movement, the seeking for signs and wonders. Almost without exception the people who are lured on this wrong road are those who have been told to fast and concentrate for something for themselves whereby the Lord may show how marvellous He is. It does look right to human reason when it is just touched on the first outer fringe by the Holy Ghost, but it contradicts emphatically what our Lord teaches, viz., that importunity in intercession is never for ourselves but for others.

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation": it is at work now; the manifestation of the kingdom of God externally is another thing. The disciples had still got their own ideas of the kingdom, they were blind to what Jesus Christ's kingdom meant, and they were so totally depressed that they slept for their own sorrow. "Watch with Me." How could they? They had no idea what He was after.

(c) The Mental Road of Dominion (Matthew 4:8-10)

This is the temptation to compromise—"Evil is in the world, compromise with it, work with it judiciously." "All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." This temptation is the most subtle of all. "Don't be so strait-laced; we have passed the day when we believe in a personal devil." May God forgive us, I am afraid we are past that stage. Will the Church that bows down and compromises succeed? Of course it will. It is the very thing that the natural man wants, but it is the lure of a wrong road to the kingdom. Beware of putting anything sweet and winsome in front of the One Who suffered in Gethsemane.

The Light of Undisciplined Vision

. . . the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

It is so easy when we see things in vision to start out and do them. We are caught up into the seventh heaven, far above all the grubby things of earth and it is magnificent for a time, but we have got to come down. After the Mount of Transfiguration comes the place where we have to live, viz., the demon-possessed valley. The test of reality is our life in the valley, not that we fly up among the golden peaks of the early morning.

(a) The Triumphant Minute

"Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona" (Matthew 16:17; cf. John 21:15-19). Peter had his triumphant minute, but he had to go through the mill after it; he went through a tremendous heart-break before he was fit to hear Jesus say, "Feed My sheep." Peter would have done anything for his Lord, the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak. We make allowances for the flesh, but we have no business to; we have to make manifest in the flesh the visions of the spirit. Thank God we are going to Heaven when we die, but thank God we are not going before we die. We get glimpses of Heaven, then we are brought down instantly into actual circumstances. Do not go too long in the light of undisciplined vision. Thank God for the triumphant minute, but we have to walk on earth according to what we saw in vision.

(b) The Transfiguration Moment

"And He was transfigured before them" (Matthew 17:2). Put alongside that moment on the Mount, Jesus standing after the Resurrection on the sea-shore in the early morning with "a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread." Thank God for seeing Jesus transfigured, and for the almightiness of the visions He does give, but remember that the vision is to be made real in actual circumstances; the glory is to be manifested in earthen vessels. It has to be exhibited through finger-tips, through eyes and hands and feet; everywhere where Jesus exhibited it. We are so like Peter on the Mount and say, "O Lord, let me stay here."

(c) The Transcendent Moment

"Even if I must die with Thee, yet will I not deny Thee" (Matthew 26:35). Peter meant it every bit, it was a transcendent moment to him, he would have done anything for Jesus Christ; and yet he denied with oaths and cursesthat he ever knew Him. Peter was no hypocrite, but he did not watch and pray. Peter based his declaration on the keen generosity of his own heart, but he did not understand that he needed to be on another basis altogether, the basis of Redemption.

Thank God for the heroic moments of life! It is comparatively easy to live in the heroic moments. We can all have haloes at times; if we stand in the right place, with stained-glass windows behind us, and have the right kind of dress on, it is not at all difficult to look remarkably fine; but there is nothing in it, not only is there nothing in it, but excessive dangers arise out of it. Beware of the transcendent moment that is a pose. A humorous sense of criticism is wholesome. Some people get to a transcendent moment and someone tells them they look remarkably fine, and everlastingly afterwards they try to live in that transcendent moment. We have to get down to the level where the reality works out, and the whole counsel comes back to this, "Watch and pray"—the secret of the sacred simplicity of prayer. Prayer imparts the power to walk and not faint, and the lasting remembrance of our lives is of the Lord, not of us.

O Lord, unto Thee do I come that I might find grace to praise and worship Thee aright. Lord lift up the light of Thy countenance upon us; send power and majestic grace. ♦ ♦ ♦ O Lord, how good it is for me to know Thee; how essentially necessary it is for me to draw nigh to Thee. How can I falter when Thou art my Life! ♦ ♦ ♦ Lord, our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom Jesus is the very image, I look to Thee and make my prayer. Bless me this hour with the feeling of Thy presence and the glow of Thy nearness, for I do trust Thee and hope only in Thee.

Lecture: Bible Training College, May 7, 1915

 

What’s the good of prayer?

Chapter I

What's the Good of Prayer? Oswald Chambers

1 Timothy 2:1-8

Because We Need To (Luke 11:1)

For Human Wits Have an End (Psalm 108:13, 19, 28)

For Human Wills Have an End (Romans 8:26)

For Human Wisdom Has an End (James 1:5)

Prayer alters ME

Because We Must Do (James 5:16)

If We Would Know God (Matthew 6:8)

If We Would Help Men (John 14:12-13)

If We Would Do God's Will (1 John 5:14-16)

Prayer alters OTHERS

Because We Can Do (Luke 18:1)

By Asking

By Seeking (Luke 11:9-13; John 15:7)

By Knocking

Prayer alters CIRCUMSTANCES through me

It is only when a man flounders beyond any grip of himself and cannot understand things that he really prays. It is not part of the natural life of a man to pray. By "natural" I mean the ordinary, sensible, healthy, worldly-minded life. We hear it said that a man will suffer in his life if he does not pray; I question it. Prayer is an interruption to personal ambition, and no man who is busy has time to pray. What will suffer is the life of God in him, which is nourished not by food but by prayer. If we look on prayer as a means of developing ourselves, there is nothing in it at all, nor do we find that idea of prayer in the Bible. Prayer is other than meditation; it is that which develops the life of God in us. When a man is born from above (rv mg), the life of the Son of God begins in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our Lord nourished the life of God in Him by prayer; He was continually in contact with His Father. We generally look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves, whereas the Bible idea of prayer is that God's holiness and God's purpose and God's wise order may be brought about, irrespective of who comes or who goes. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament.

When a man is in real distress he prays without reasoning; he does not think things out, he simply spurts it out—"Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses." When we get into a tight place our logic goes to the winds, and we work from the implicit part of ourselves.

"Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him." Then why ask? Very evidently our ideas about prayer and Jesus Christ's are not the same. Prayer to Him is not a means of getting things from God, but in order that we may get to know God. Prayer, that is, is not to be used as the petted privilege of a spoiled child seeking for ideal conditions in which to indulge his spiritual propensities ad lib.; the purpose of prayer is to reveal the Presence of God, equally present at all times and in every condition.

A man may say, "Well, if the Almighty has decreed things, why need I pray? If He has made up His mind, what is the use of me thinking I can alter His mind by prayer?" We must remember that there is a difference between God's order and God's permissive will. God's order reveals His character; His permissive will applies to what He permits. For instance, it is God's order that there should be no sin, no suffering, no sickness, no limitation and no death; His permissive will is all these things. God has so arranged matters that we are born into His permissive will, and we have to get at His order by an effort of our own, viz., by prayer. To be children of God, according to the New Testament, does not mean that we are creatures of God only, but that we grow into a likeness to God by our own moral character.

I question whether the people who continually ask for prayer meetings know the first element of prayer. It is often an abortion of religious hysterics, a disease of the nerves taking a spiritual twist. Jesus says we are to pray in His name, i.e., in His nature, and His nature is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost when we are born from above (rv mg; see Luke 11:13; Romans 5:5). Again, Jesus did not promise to be at every prayer meeting, but only at those "where two or three are gathered together in My name," i.e., in His nature (Matthew 18:20). Jesus Christ does not pay any attention to the gift of "religious gab," and His words—"But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking," refer not to the mere repetition and form of words, but to the fact that it is never our earnestness that brings us into touch with God, but our Lord Jesus Christ's vitalising death. (See Hebrews 10:19)

Our Lord in His teaching regarding prayer never once referred to unanswered prayer; He said God always answers prayer. If our prayers are in the name of Jesus, i.e., in accordance with His nature, the answers will not be in accordance with our nature, but with His. We are apt to forget this, and to say without thinking that God does not always answer prayer. He does every time, and when we are in close communion with Him, we realise that we have not been misled.

"Ask, and it shall be given you." We grouse before God, and are apologetic or apathetic, but we ask very few things; yet what a splendid audacity a child-like child has! and our Lord says, "Except ye . . . become as little children. . . ." Jesus says, "Ask, and God will do." Give Jesus Christ a chance, give Him elbow-room, and no man ever does it until he is at his wits' end. During the war many a man prayed for the first time in his life. When a man is at his wits' end, it is not a cowardly thing to pray, it is the only way to get in touch with Reality. As long as we are self-sufficient and complacent, we don't need to ask God for anything, we don't want Him; it is only when we know we are powerless that we are prepared to listen to Jesus Christ and to do what He says.

Then again our Lord says, "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will," i.e., what your will is in. There is very little our wills are in, consequently it is easy to work up false emotions. We intercede in a mechanical way, our minds are not in it. When we see a man going wrong, it is a false way to "buttonhole" him and tell him about it; Jesus Christ says, Come and tell Me, and I will give you life for him that sins not "unto death" (see 1 John 5:16).

Be yourself exactly before God, and present your problems, the things you know you have come to your wits' end about. Ask what you will, and Jesus Christ says your prayers will be answered. We can always tell whether our will is in what we ask by the way we live when we are not praying.

The New Testament view of a Christian is that he is one in whom the Son of God has been revealed, and prayer deals with the nourishment of that life. One way it is nourished is by refusing to worry over anything, for worry means there is something over which we cannot have our own way, and is in reality personal irritation with God. Jesus Christ says, "Don't worry about your life, don't fear them which kill the body; be afraid only of not doing what the Spirit of God indicates to you."

"In every thing give thanks." Never let anything push you to your wits' end, because you will get worried, and worry makes you self-interested and disturbs the nourishment of the life of God. Give thanks to God that He is there, no matter what is happening. Many a man has found God in the belly of hell in the trenches during the days of war, i.e., they came to their wits' end and discovered God. The secret of Christian quietness is not indifference, but the knowledge that God is my Father, He loves me, I shall never think of anything He will forget, and worry becomes an impossibility.

It is not so true that "Prayer changes things" as that prayer changes me, and then I change things; consequently we must not ask God to do what He has created us to do. For instance, Jesus Christ is not a social reformer; He came to alter us first, and if there is any social reform to be done on earth, we must do it. God has so constituted things that prayer on the basis of Redemption alters the way a man looks at things. Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man's disposition. When you pray, things remain the same, but you begin to be different. The same thing when a man falls in love, his circumstances and conditions are the same, but he has a sovereign preference in his heart for another person which transfigures everything. If we have been born from above (rv mg) and Christ is formed in us, instantly we begin to see things differently—"If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation" (rv mg).

Heaven above is brighter blue, Earth around is sweeter green! Something lives in every hue Christless eyes have never seen. Birds with gladder songs o'erflow, Flowers with deeper beauties shine, Since I know, as now I know, I am His, and He is mine.

The good of praying is that it gets us to know God and enables God to perform His order through us, no matter what His permissive will may be. A man is never what he is in spite of his circumstances, but because of them. Circumstances, as Reader Harris once said, are like feather beds—very comfortable to he on top of, but immensely smothering if they get on top of you. Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God, always keeps us on top of our circumstances.

How beautiful this undisturbed morning hour is with God! ♦ ♦ ♦ O Lord, this day my soul would stay upon Thee as Creator of the world, and upon our Lord Jesus Christ as Creator of His life in me. Oh for the power of Thy Spirit to adore Thee in fuller measure! ♦ ♦ ♦ "What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation. . . ." Can I think of anything so gracious and complete in surrender and devotion and gratitude as to take from Thee? O Lord, I would that I had a livelier sense of Thee and of Thy bounties continually with me. ♦ ♦ ♦ O Lord, this day may Thy beauty and grace and soothing peace be in and upon me, and may no wind or weather or anxiety ever touch Thy beauty and Thy peace in my life or in this place.

Lecture: Bible Training College, April 6, 1915

 

What is impossible?

My devotion this morning took me to Luke 18. I have read these stories many times and we have all heard them many times. The passage below seems to tag on what I wrote Sunday. It is almost like He is driving a point home. It feels like if I just let some people go and give them to the Lord. There is a reward if I just let go. It also means to pick up your cross and to follow Him. Just follow Him and let Him take care of it. Oswald's devo this morning touched on verse 17 the short version means if there is something in your life that you feel would be ridiculous to ask the Lord, then that is the very thing you need to be asking about!

 

Luke 18:27-30
He replied, "What is impossible for people is possible with God." Peter said, "We've left our homes to follow you." "Yes," Jesus replied, "and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God,
will be repaid many times over in this life, and will have eternal life in the world to come." NLT

Jeremiah 17:9

Jeremiah 17:8
"For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.NASB95

Jeremiah 17:9-10
"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be." The Message

This morning I went from Idols in Isaiah 44 and 45 to Jeremiah 17 midstream. What I mean is during the middle of reading chpt 45 I hear read Jeremiah 17 :9 One thing I realized after reading both of these chapters is this, it is very hard to have your roots deeply planted by the stream and have an idol in your heart at the same time. It is very hard to have good tasting fruit in your life if you have idols. So my question would be ……… several questions actually

1. Can your family eat your fruit or is your fruit poison to your family and friends
   
2. Is your fruit poison to your family but edible to your friends?
   
3. Are you letting the Lord search your heart? Or have you closed that door?
   
4. Has the heat been turned up in your life/heart and your leaves are wilting?
   
5. Do you know all of the right things to say but not living by what you say?
   
6. Last but not least, do you have an IDOL?
   

Peace today and my comments are only to stir not condemn

 

John 6

I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever."

⁵⁹ He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Many Disciples Desert Jesus

⁶⁰ Many of his disciples said, "This is very hard to understand. How can anyone accept it?"

⁶¹ Jesus was aware that his disciples were complaining, so he said to them, "Does this offend you? ⁶² Then what will you think if you see the Son of Man ascend to heaven again? ⁶³ The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing. And the very words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴ But some of you do not believe me." (For Jesus knew from the beginning which ones didn't believe, and he knew who would betray him.) ⁶⁵ Then he said, "That is why I said that people can't come to me unless the Father gives them to me."

As I am reading this for the umpteenth time … the last verse really struck me. This is what I got from it. We all have people in our lives that we look at … maybe even judge. We think …….. They just don't get it. Do you know someone like that? That person may be lost or they may be saved but living the lost life (that kind of doesn't sound right does it?) Just because you are saved does not mean you are free. Anyway we wonder... Lord when are you going to do something? When really it should be, Lord let me get out of your way while you do your job. Picture this … you are doing your job and someone comes over and tries to push you out of the way because they think they can do it better. While you're giving a speech they interrupt and try to give a better one or they take the saw from you and cut the boards there way, only it is wrong. Now what happens is the job takes longer. Get the picture. We are responsible for planting the seeds … let someone else do the watering. Let the Lord does His job, we cannot do it better. That person will get there on the Lord's time not yours.

Remember God's kindness will lead them to repentance. Romans 2:4

Have a blessed day!