This morning I decided to listen to the advice of Mrs. Anne Graham Lotz. Yesterday in My Heart's Cry she said that we speak to God through prayer and then listen intently as He speaks to us through His Word. While putting this into practice today God seemed to be leading me to the same thoughts in each part of my quiet time reading. Don't you love when that happens?!
It began with Numbers 10:35 "And whenever the ark set out, Moses said, 'Arise, O Lord, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you."
When I read about the Israelites carrying the ark of the covenant with them this picture of a massive sea of people following this ark on a pole rests in my mind. Imagine over 600,000 people wandering around following it! They kept the ark before them knowing that God's presence resided there protecting them and bringing them victory against any enemy. One might wonder who would go up against that many people anyway, but this was not a trained army. There were no intimidating uniforms. No clanging of armor as they walked. It was families. Children. Grandparents. Siblings. The ark was their armor and God was their defender.
There is no shining ark leading us now. We aren't all wandering together. We are scattered around the world and often without fellowship and support of other believers. But we don't need the ark because when we give our lives to Jesus, God dwells here, with us, in us. His Holy Spirit is our guide and counselor. There may not be an army lined up around our city (or maybe there is) but the enemy is always at work in the life of a believer. If we choose to remember and believe God is with us, there is victory.
Oswald Chambers says today, "Self-satisfaction says, 'I can't surrender," or "I can't be free.' But the spiritual part of our being never says, 'I can't'; it simply soaks up everything around it. Our spirit hungers for more and more. It is the way we are built. We are designed with a great capacity for God, but sin, our own individuality, and wrong thinking keep us from getting to Him."
My self-satisfaction often comes from food. When that desire creeps in the word "no" creeps out. Surrendering to God's will in those moments is met with, "I can't." And my spirit does hunger for more and more, but I'm shoveling the wrong things in. Everything I try to fill it with is temporary unless I am filling it with more of Jesus. It is wrong thinking, sin, my own individuality. He continues...
"God will not bring our 'arguments...and every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ'
(2 Corinthians 10:5)-we have to do it.
It is what Paul meant in Galatians 2:20 when he said, 'I have been crucified with Christ...' His individuality had been broken and his spirit had been united with his Lord.
We tend to rely on our own energy, instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Jesus."
Rather than taking every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, I tend to just push the thought down...and then it rises up again. My own energy isn't enough to keep it under the surface. Only power through Jesus is going to make me free in this.
John 15:4 says, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."
John 15:7 says, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."
Since you are not in my head these thoughts may seem totally unrelated. The thought process looks something like this:
We are to abide in Christ. When we live with Him in us He is the one that does the work through us. It is not our energy or our work that makes us more like Him. When we soak in His words they sink deep and we obey and we share His work and we love one another because that is what's in us. Not because of what we do, but because of what He does. The Israelites remained with God as they carried the ark with them and followed Him by a pillar of cloud or of fire, and they were protected. When we abide in Christ we too are protected from the fiery darts of the enemy.
But in this world the lies get loud and we are the ones who have to take those thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ-to be broken so He can draw them out of us instead of us pushing them down as they drag us further away from Him.
All that I read today seemed to be reminding me that I need to walk in His presence. That's it. To stop doing and listen more and let Him do His work in and through me.
So what might happen if I saturate my heart with His word? To take it in every chance I get? To really abide in Him so that He abides in me?
And if I can do that, maybe I can really know what it means to be satisfied by His love...
Lord, thank you for waking my sleeping heart. For reminding me in this season of my life that if I would just rest in You, You will do the work that I have tried for so long to do on my own. Freedom comes through being completely yours, totally identified with You. And I am waiting...in expectation...
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