Tag: submission

The Way to Real and Lasting Self-Improvement

Galatians 6:14
But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Man throughout the ages has always tried to define what creates a better and more satisfying lifestyle. From a secular standpoint, many different types of programs, processes and religions have taken turns being touted as the new thing that will change lives for the better. But none of these have stood the test of time, nor will they ever. In the end, the secular programs and processes are about as effective as New Year’s resolutions.

No plan except the salvation plan of Our Savior has real and lasting merit. As the apostle Paul taught repeatedly, vain and carnal hearts will never come up with a plan that even approaches the way, the truth and the life that is offered to us through the Cross of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

We can read every single book on how to improve ourselves. We can attend every seminar that promises to make positive changes in how we live our lives. Life changes that are instituted from any of these will produce nothing of real and lasting value. No matter how much we believe that we have improved ourselves, it will not be sufficient. Until our minds and hearts are changed supernaturally by the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, we will only change the elements of this world. Only through the Cross will we truly change and claim victory over the foolishness that the world offers and that our flesh demands.

Let us claim the promise of Our Savior to perfect His strength in our weakness. Let us call on the Holy Spirit to guide us on our path of sanctification. Let us rejoice as God reveals His plans for our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for sending Your Son, Jesus, to give us victory over the weakness that is our flesh. We rejoice in knowing that by accepting Your Son as Our Savior that we can overcome all of the trials and tribulations that the world offers to us. We pray that we will be given the grace and the wisdom to see the folly that we will undertake if we arrogantly look to our own abilities to secure our future. We ask that the influence of the Holy Spirit will keep us in humble submission to Our Lord and Savior at the foot of His Cross. May we deny all riches, praises, honors and pleasures of the world in exchange for our renewed lives in Jesus Christ. We ask all these things in name of Our Savior King, Jesus Christ.

Our Weapons of Victory Against the Enemy

James 4:7
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Satan is to be looked upon as an enemy, one who must be watched and guarded against. Faith, humble prayers and heavenly wisdom are are our weapons of resistance.

Man without Jesus Christ is not capable of standing against the powers that seek to devour and destroy him. In the darkness of the flesh, we are unable to see that we are being lead into lives that will never be totally satisfying. We cannot see that our lives are much less than they could be, much less than they should be.

But when the light of Jesus Christ comes into our lives, we see how life can be, how life should be, how our lives are renewed in the spirit of Our Savior. We come to recognize that the renewal of our minds and our spirits is only available to us through our submission to Our Savior. We come to discover that the dominating power of the world, our flesh and Satan himself are defeated through the victory that Jesus Christ won for us on the Cross.

Let us rightfully proclaim our victory over the enemy. Let us boldly stand against the one who is trying to devour and destroy us. Let us fearlessly claim what Jesus provided for us on the Cross.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing us to come to You to gain the armor that we need to defend ourselves from the enemy who comes to defeat us. We thank You for the weapon of prayer, the sword of Your Holy Word and the shield of faith. We rejoice in knowing that the victory is ours because Your Son, Jesus, claimed it for us forever when He died on the Cross for our sins. We humbly come before You, Lord, to proclaim that we are laying aside our own strength so that we may dwell in the protection of Your shadow. We ask all these things in the name of our Living Shield, Jesus Christ.

How Satan Uses Distractions to Dilute Our Full Surrender to God’s Plans for Us

Luke 7:30
But the Pharisees and experts in religious law rejected God’s plan for them, for they had refused John’s baptism.

God’s plan for our lives calls for total surrender to Him. The enemy has a different plan. The Pharisees suffered under the hand of Satan as they rejected God’s plans in order to follow their own plans which they were deceived into believing were built upon many good things.

The enemy uses all the facets of our lives on earth as areas of distraction in order to keep us from full surrender to Our Lord. Our work, recreation, hobbies and even family activities can all be big areas of distraction for us. Ironically, the work that we do as a ministry to support the Body of Christ may also become a distraction that keeps us from digging deep into our relationship with Jesus Christ. All of these activities can certainly be deemed good in their own right and are likely extremely productive. That is why Satan is so successful in distracting us from God. Satan entices us to replace God with good things.

Like the Pharisees, as we pursue all these good things in our lives, we may miss out on the special things that God has set aside for us. Oneness with Jesus Christ is the only way for us to successfully balance all that we deal with in life. Jesus is the fulcrum. He balances our load by providing the right foundation for all that we do. When we stay in balance by following the urgings of the Holy Spirit, we can reside in a place of rest and satisfaction unlike anything that we can derive from our own plans.

Let us strive to make Jesus the foundation for everything in our lives. Let us seek to make Jesus Christ the center of all we do. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us to differentiate the good opportunities in our lives from the God opportunities awaiting us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for using us to carry out Your plans for us and those around us. We pray, Lord, that You will draw us into full surrender to Your Son. May we make Him the center of everything in our lives. We ask that the Holy Spirit will help us to discover the unique plans that You have for our lives. We ask all these things in the name of the One from whom all good things come, Jesus Christ.

Imitating Christ Daily

1 Corinthians 11:1
Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.

In Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, he exhorted them to pattern their lives after Jesus Christ. Paul understood that obedience to a creed simply takes us to a proper and higher level of lifestyle. Accepting Jesus Christ as Our Savior and patterning our lives after Him will move us toward a level of perfection, holiness and purity that only He could attain and we can begin to approach through Him.

In truth, it is not good enough to be good. It is not good enough to do great works. The only thing that we can do that is of any eternal value is to submit our lives to Jesus Christ as Our Savior, to die of self and to take on the spirit of the One who dwells within us. Anything less than full submission to Our Lord and Master and anything less than becoming imitators of Jesus Christ as His disciples leaves us short of being true Christians.

What is the goal then? The goal is to imitate Jesus Christ in our daily lives. What is the challenge? The challenge is that we are incapable of achieving our goal without the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives. What is the answer then? The answer is to surrender all that we are and all that we have and all that we will ever be and all that we will ever have to Our Lord and Savior. Then we must turn to the Holy Spirit daily to guide us and strengthen us as the natural man within us refuses to surrender. Finally, we should rejoice and praise God for He has provided the unchanging, unfailing way, the truth and the life that will allow us to fulfill our stated goal.

Let us yoke ourselves to Our Redeemer. Let us yield to Him as He guides us on our path of sanctification. Let us surrender to Him as He prepares us to stand in righteousness before the Father for all eternity.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing the Word to become flesh so that we could see the standard to which we are all called. May we stand before You one day in the image of Your Son, washed clean by His blood and perfected by His presence within us. Father God, we pray that the Holy Spirit will teach us how to become true disciples of Jesus as we spend our time on earth preparing for the glorious day of coming into Your presence. We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High God.

Reaping What God Has Stored Up for Us

Matthew 25:18
But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.

What a shame it is to accept our salvation and then to remain mostly unchanged by the Holy Spirit within us. In doing so, we are like the servant that took the talent from his master and buried it in the ground without doing anything with it to increase its value to the master.

When we do not access all that is available to us through the Holy Spirit, like the non-productive servant we will see the flow of the gifts from Our Master cease. We will see ourselves denied the opportunity to reap from all that God has stored up for us. Remember Jesus Christ gave everything for us. He held back nothing. He expects the same from us in return.

Also remember that Jesus rewards those who are faithful in their service to Him. If we look for and seek the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we open our access to all the treasures of heaven. We enable God to prepare us to serve Him and bear fruit for Him in the manner that He planned for us. Often we will find that our harvest for the King is well beyond the limits of our imagination.

Let us eagerly seek the instruction and guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us hold back nothing from the Lord. Let us insure through our total submission that we reap all that God has planned for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gifts and talents that You have given us. We call on Your Holy Spirit to take us beyond what we see and understand about our own capabilities to a place where we are releasing things in our lives that are not even imaginable to us now. May all the gain we see and all the fruit we bear be for Your honor and Your glory. We ask all these things in the name of Our Bountiful Lord, Jesus Christ.

Learning to Let Go of Our Old Lives

Matthew 11:28
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

At some level, we all take on the heavy burdens of this world. We all seek to escape from the stress filled grind that most of us experience in some form from our day to day activities. Jesus invites all of us who labor and are carrying burdens to come to Him. He promises that He will provide us with the rest that we need.

But be assured that “I will give you rest” does not mean “I will hold your hand while you lay in bed languishing in your burdens.” It means, “I will pull you out of the darkened state that you are in. I will pull you from the oppression of the enemy. I will give you the spirit of a new life, but I expect you to let go of your old life.”

Why do we insist on hanging on to the old things that do nothing but hinder our progress toward finding the rest that is promised to us? Why do we accept anything less than the full measure that God has set aside for us? It is all about our commitment. When we come to Jesus, we are committing to leave everything of this world behind in exchange for a personal relationship with Our Savior.

Let us abandon the callings of our flesh as we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ and allow His Spirit to guide all that we do. Let us take victory over all of our trials as we live in submission to Our Savior. Let us receive the peace that He promises us as we respond to His command, “Come to Me.”

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing a refuge for us – a place where we can be free from the burdens that the world tries to lay on us. We praise You for providing the comfort that we can find nowhere else except through our relationship with Your Son, Jesus. May we be drawn by the Holy Spirit to respond to the words of promise, “Come unto me.” May we learn to live our lives in the vitality and might that You offer us in Christ. We ask all these things in the name of the One who provides our comfort, Jesus Christ.

Moving Toward Our Manifest Destiny in Christ

John 13:17
If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

God told Moses to speak to the rock and it would yield water. But because the water did not come quick enough to suit Moses, in anger he struck the rock. Water came forth for the people to drink, but God was not pleased. Because Moses did not trust in God’s timing, he tried to make things happen his own way. In the process, he disobeyed God. Moses later suffered the consequences of his disobedience. He was not permitted to enter into the land of Canaan with his people.

What “promised land” are we missing because we are not being perfectly obedient in what God is asking us to do? God allows us much room for choice in our lives, but He also changes His rewards when we make poor choices. This is especially true if God has laid out a specific path for us to take, but we choose to take a different path.

Moses missed going into the promised land because he was not perfectly obedient to God’s direction in his life. We certainly risk missing our promised land when we are anything less than fully submitted to God’s direction in our lives.

Let us draw near to the Lord. Let us seek earnestly the guidance and instruction of the Holy Spirit. Let us move without hesitation when the Holy Spirit directs us toward our manifest destiny in Christ. Let us receive the fullness of the rewards that the Lord has in store for His obedient children.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You that You direct our ways through the urgings of the Holy Spirit in our lives each day. Prepare our hearts, Lord, so that we may be alert and obedient to Your calling on our lives. Teach us how to hear and respond to the Holy Spirit so that we may know the things that You ask of us. We pray that we will have the strength and wisdom to comply in accordance with Your plans for our lives. May we receive the fullness of the blessings that You have set aside for us. We ask all these things in the name of the Lamb without Blemish, Jesus Christ.

The Freedom of Serving Without Concern for Outcome

1 Corinthians 3:9
For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.

The first day on any job is generally very exciting and also somewhat stressful. Immediately, we are naturally concerned about the results that we are going to be able to produce in our new job. Consider how liberating it would be if the first thing our new boss told us was, “Just follow my instruction and do not worry about the results. I will be responsible for the results. You will be richly rewarded for following my instruction no matter what happens.”

If the boss we choose to serve is Our Father in heaven, then we have found the liberating boss that we have always longed for. More importantly, this is where God wants us. He wants us to serve Him without any concern about the outcome other than to have the faith that He will fulfill what He asks us to do for Him. He simply wants us to be instruments of His work, living vessels of His perfect love and forgiveness.

It may be entirely possible that we are taking on work for which no man is sufficient. Yet in submission to the Father, we are only asked to be diligent and faithful in carrying out our calling. We are certain to find that we have a co-laborer in Christ. Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, will look over us, direct us and strengthen us as we do our part in bringing in His harvest.

Let us humbly sit at the feet of Our Master, Jesus Christ. Let us join Him in the work that He does for His Father in heaven. Let us rejoice in the service that we are called to do.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing us to join You in Your work. We rejoice in knowing that You receive great honor and glory when Your children surrender to the rule and reign of Jesus Christ in their lives. Open our eyes so that we may see what You are calling us to do in Your kingdom. Release in us all the power and authority that is ours through Jesus Christ. Shield us from taking on destructive personal pride as we see success when doing Your work. We ask all these things in the name of the One who saved us and called us to join Him in serving His Father in heaven, Jesus Christ.

Complete Submission to the Father’s Will For the Good of All Mankind

Matthew 26:39
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus fully accepted His assignment of death on the Cross. He knew that His sacrifice was necessary for the salvation of all men. He knew that His death on the Cross was the reason He was sent to earth. The thing that overwhelmed Jesus was the impending separation from the Father when He would take on the sins of all men. Yet Jesus was fully obedient to the will of the Father for the good of all mankind. And He was received in all His glory by the Father.

According to this example of Christ, we must drink of the most bitter cup which God puts into our hands. Even though our flesh will seek immediate relief from all trial in our lives, we must recognize and accept the will of Our Father as we go through our trials. For, as God allowed the unspeakable trial of the Cross for the benefit of all mankind, He allows each of us to go through our trials for our ultimate eternal gain. Through our faithful obedience, one day we will be standing sinless before Almighty God and we will be received into glory by Him.

Let us face each cup of bitterness in our lives with hope and confidence in the promises of the Cross. Let us rejoice that Almighty God loves us so much that He works every detail in our lives for our eternal good. Let us exalt the name of Jesus for accepting His cup of bitterness so that we may have victory over every trial in our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You that You allow the trials in our lives that prepare us to be received by You. May You provide the grace we need for our spiritual maturation so that we are able to take our cup of bitterness and rejoice in our submission to Your will and plan for our lives. We pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us and strengthen us so that we may overcome the weakness of our flesh. We surrender to Our Savior and ask that we live in the fullness that He has made available to us through His sacrifice on the Cross. We ask all these things in the name of the Word made flesh on our eternal behalf, Jesus Christ.

Supernatural Assistance to Overcome Adversity

2 Corinthians 6:4
In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.

Jesus prepared his disciples for what was to come. He forewarned them to expect tribulation in their lives. He then inspired them by letting them know that in the face of every adversity that He had already secured the victory for them. And so it was. As they endured all that came against them, the world noticed and their ministries grew. As it was with them, so it will be with us.

In every element of our lives, we are certain to experience resistance. Whether our activity is on the physical, emotional or spiritual level, we cannot avoid being challenged. This is simply a fact of life. Our ability to cope will be determined not by our own strength but by the strength we gain through the Holy Spirit.

As we learn to heed the urgings of the Holy Spirit, we will become more capable of overcoming the trials and challenges in our lives. Constant successful response to what the world throws at us will build up our proficiency in each area. The more times that exercise is chosen over idleness, the stronger we will be. The more times patience is chosen over anger, the more peaceful we will be. The more times righteousness is chosen over sin, the closer we will come to reaching the holiness that Jesus has set aside for us. The more times we make the good choices that we are shown by the Holy Spirit, the more proficient we will become in producing positive results in all areas of our lives.

As we endure, those around us will notice. We will become living testimonies of Jesus Christ to the world. Our personal ministries will become fruitful.

Let us learn to rely on Our Lord to endure all that the world throws at us. Let us seek to make all of our choices and meet all of our challenges under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Let us live daily under submission to Our Savior who stands by us. Let us rejoice in knowing that our endurance will bear fruit for the kingdom of God.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You that we may have peace in our lives no matter what is coming against us. We bless the name of Jesus who died on the Cross so that we may have victory over all evil. We rejoice in knowing that we can have comfort when the world is trying to steal it from us. We pray that our pride will not lead us to believe in our own ability to overcome the world. We ask, Father, for the wisdom to lean on Our Savior in our times of tribulation. May we be built up in every area of our lives through our submission to Your Son. As we endure, may others be drawn to the One who strengthens us. We ask all these things in the name of Our Victorious King, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.