There was Never a Choice for True Christians in the US Election

I scoured the internet almost in vain, during and after the US election in the hope that I would find Christians willing to stand alone.  I know the hard way that standing alone is never easy but I expected to see the true Christians in North America taking a firm stand not for mere appearances but for God’s sake.  In these days and age it seems like every cause is louder than true Christianity. While we are called by God to be all things to all men and to yield to others, we have also been taught not to stand with man in their sins.

It has been painstaking all throughout the US presidential election as I watched one Christian after another taking a stand for Christianity through Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong, we are all called to do our civic duty to vote. But, when you hear that Christians voted because they found one or the other candidate somewhat more pleasing to God you know Christianity has become a travesty and the diluted Gospel has permeated the hearts of North Americans “Christians.”  2 Corinthians 10: 12 say: “we do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.”  

It is awfully sad when you find some people who are considered to be a pillar of the Christian community like Franklin Graham not making the difference either. He has chosen to speak out through various ways. One of them was the OpEdNews, in an article written by Dr. Brasch an award-winning syndicated columnist, the Grahams told the Christian community what was the Christian things to do, (I paraphrased there) yet cowardly hide behind words expressed through their spokesman that he and his father did not endorse neither candidate.  “However, Billy Graham reportedly told Romney he would do "all I can to help you," and removed Mormonism from a list of cults on one of their web pages. In February, Franklin Graham, who earns about $600,000 a year as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, declared that Obama had plans to create "a new nation without God or perhaps under many gods." Here is the link to the full article. It is like saying, I do not endorse anyone but read my words and observe my actions. When I put everything into context, I realize the Grahams, mainly Franklin do not think much of the people who see them as leaders.  My personal opinion they missed out on a great opportunity to educate those who believe in them as leaders and pillars of the Christian community. But, then again we can only lead as far as we have been with Him.

In the end the choice was between two men holding partial Christian beliefs and while they look great in our human eyes, spiritually speaking none of these two men have their identities grounded in Christ. Anyone with an ounce of Godly wisdom can tell you that.  Now this is not to say this might not happen to them one day, before they die. But for now that is not the case. If anything I would be inclined to say that both of these men hold something very common with most of us living in the western culture is that they believe in their own beliefs much more than believing in Christ. After all the Bible tells us in Matthew 7:15-16 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?”

President Obama lost clarity of moral fortitude; he ended up sacrificing his principles to hold onto power. As for Mitt Romney, he changes spots like a chameleon to reflect the mood and ambient temperature. The man cannot tell a truth from a lie how did he end up being a Christian choice is beyond me and deeply sad. Unless we look at sin as if it was a pimple instead of what it is in God’s eyes. Both men political standards say who they are, what they believe in, and what they are made up inside. Fundamentally these two men have immoral characters.

We know Christianity is in big trouble when you have a “The Rev. Jerry Priscano, a Catholic priest from Erie, Pa., said Obama was the anti-Christ.” This quote also has been taken from the OpEdNews article as stated in the paragraph above. When I read the comments of this Catholic priest it makes me almost want to say: ‘look who's calling the kettle black.’

Quote from the Fellowship of The Unashamed: “…. I am part of the “Fellowship of the Unashamed.” I have Holy Spirit power. The die has been cast. I've stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of His. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions, mundane talking, chintzy giving, and dwarfed goals! …. I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops. And when He comes to get His own, He’ll have no problems recognizing me. My colors will be clear.

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God Is Not Obligated To Us In The Way We Think

Devotion

Read Jeremiah 18:18 "Then said they, Come, and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words."

The spiritual blindness the Israelites were experiencing was simply gut wrenching and destructive. They were so deep in their presumptuous faith that no one, not even the messenger sent by God could get through them. They were all like a group of herd with no reasoning, going all in the same wrong direction while looking forward to it. They were so devoid of the capacity to see what was of God and what was of men that the message, which was meant to touch their hearts and bring repentance, was lost on them. Their harden hearts contained pure evil thoughts and deeds as such they have chosen the way of the false prophet, and ignored their God. The idea that they could be in the wrong was totally inconceivable to them. So, instead of examining themselves, change their lives around through repentance, they decided to get rid of the messenger.

Our behavior today has become similar to the Israelites. We, in the Western civilization are lost in our own narrow mindedness and the choice we made to stay out of His light we are incapable of seeing what is right in front of our noses.  Like the Israelites we feel if we say things with our mouths go through some rituals in His name, then, we are excused to do as we please, and walk away from Him and His Word to never become what He intended for us to be. When it is convenient for us, we quote some Words in the Bible to show to other people that we are in touch with our spirituality. Somehow, in our feeble mind, we think we deserve a medal because we think we “speak the truth.” In the meantime, we have no idea in our soul to what extend this truth we are claiming that we know and quote all the time is actually a being. The truth is no less than Christ crucified that permeates the soul. It is not just a word that we toss around in our own understanding. The truth is real, the truth is alive, the truth is the ascended Christ

PRAYER: Christ forgives our hard hearts and bring us to a place where we learn to live out a full Gospel like you intended it to be. Revive our heart and help us to walk away from that false sense of security that permeates our lives.

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Why Desires Are Not Good Enough For God?

This is an excerpt of my book  “Apprehended & Apprehending”

Chapter 7 title “Our noble desires are not enough”

I can recall wanting a healthier body for the past thirty years, but in my mind, the pain it takes to keep a workout discipline outweigh my desire for an ideal body. In the same way our desires to live out a life of intimacy with Christ is honorable, but that’s all there is to it if we do not take it further with a childlike faith and attitude in Christ. We cannot be content with simply praying a good life to happen as if by magic. No, we must seek diligently for Him.

Look what His Word says to us in Proverbs 8:17,

“I love those who loves me, and those who seek me find me.”

No need for interpretation, it’s clear. It takes faith to seek for Him—more so, it takes love for Him and the dismissal of man’s approval and attitude towards us while we seek Him. Any desire to get closer to God, if not moved by an action of our faith in Him, will remain just what it is—a desire. All over the Bible, we can see that desires are not enough to live the Christian life. When we read the Scriptures, we see that we are on a journey of becoming. If all we had to do was to wait—while going through the motions and accumulating head knowledge with our intellect—then there would not be any need for the Holy Spirit. Why would we need His help? God’s plan is for the Holy Spirit to help us become what our Father in Heaven wishes to see us become during life right here on earth. We know it is a journey of becoming, because Paul told us in Ephesians 4:13,

“Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness

of Christ.”

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Why Shoud I Follow Hard After God?

This is an excerpt of my newly released Christian book 

"Apprehended & Apprehending"

Taken from the chapter 5 of the book

We follow hard after God because we have become aware of the need for a deeper life in Him, with Holy hunger. He initiates this pursuit to a point where we hunger so much that nothing can satisfy us anymore unless we get hold of Him in the depth of our beings. This awareness of Him seeking for us causes a chain reaction as the chase begins. At the beginning, it is not that difficult because we are head over heels in love with Him. I remember being apprehensive, wondering how I managed to fall in love with Him simply because I did not know Christians could fall in love with God. In this hot pursuit, you will soon realize that it takes everything you possess in your heart, soul, and spirit to follow hard after Him because of the intensity, the urgency, the zeal, and so on. Soon, you find out pursuing hard after God is about claiming your inheritance through the rigid preparation of an heir in the making. Eventually, this pursuit led me to the wilderness with Him where you become exhausted but you are to persevere and endure. As you continue the chase you live with the attitude and the full knowledge that you are indeed the King’s precious child.

 The only way Christ can completely apprehend us is if we join Him on the journey and do our share through total surrender. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that Christ does not have the ability to apprehend us without our help, but this is how He has chosen to work. He will not override our will to love Him and join Him in this journey. Neither am I saying that a lip service job of surrender will do. He is not interested in having a half-baked surrender that is done on a case by case basis. Either one of these wrong methods is a rejection of the terms of His covenant with us. He wants our all with no reservations.  When we understand what Christ has done for us, we understand His immeasurable grace, love, mercy and goodness. We cannot help but run back to His feet and surrender ourselves. When we start enjoying the life we have in Him through faith, we understand how lucky we are compared to those who are perishing. When we learn the sweetness of living in His bosoms we also realize how silly we were for having resisted Him for so long as well as for the time we wasted away from Him. Only then do we see the gravity, the ignorance, the blindness, the loss, and the present and future pain of living in the Devil's claws. As we recognize what we have in Him, we enjoy the freedom we have, willingly becoming His prisoners and His bondservant. What a life! What a God! What a wonderful paradox we live through Christ!

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Knowing Him In The Power Of His Resurrection

This Is an Excerpt of chapter 5 from the newly released book 

“Apprehended & Apprehending” which is based on Philippians 3:10-12

...... For those who love Him, death is not death; it is rather this coveted life you have found in Him that you go forward to claim with so much joy and anticipation. Death is simply a continuation of this life you have come to know in Him. Your being able to see Him with your spiritual eyes builds a craving to go to Him in death in order that you might live eternal life. It means everything the moment you come to know Him and be in Him.

We too are expected to lay down our lives for the sake of the Gospel. The incentive to do so is that Christ did it first so that we can learn through Him. We should offer our lives for the edification of the Church, for our brothers and sisters in Christ, and for the Gospel to reach the un-reached. However, this does not mean we go and chose something to do on our own just because the need is there. It does not mean we expose ourselves recklessly either. As He works His cross within and your identification is grounded in His work, then you cease to live and work out of a sense of duty because the driving force behind everything that you do and all that you are is in the power of His resurrection and His life in you. This life brings you to a point where you can say with confidence 'I get God' because you are found in the middle of His purpose.

 In this day and age, we have people left, right, and center choosing to do “stuff” for Him, they build churches, become teachers, go to the mission field, put on healing shows and so forth. But we do not have enough people wanting to come to Him just because He is who He says He is! Christ’s example showed us that we need to acquire intimacy with the Father, and then we can go in His name, having been prepared by Him. Shame on us! We claim to love Him, yet like the Pharisees, we have become masters at substituting Him. There is a difference between being His worshipers and a fan of His. The work that is acceptable to God is an extension of who we are in Him. How can we sacrifice ourselves for the truth when the truth is not even in us? How can we give ourselves to the Master’s cause when we do not have the full meaning explained to us by the Holy Spirit through living a deeper Christianity in Him?



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The Fellowship Of His Sufferings

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This Post is From The 4th Chapter of My Newly Released Christian Book 

"Apprehended & Apprehending"

Chapter Title: The Fellowship of His Sufferings

.......If you truly receive Him in your heart and you immediately die afterwards, then you are indeed saved, and at judgment time, God will judge and reward you according to His own sets Standards. Remember God is God, He said to Moses in Exodus 33:19,

“ … For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose”

It is not our place to corner Him by using the story of the thief on the cross. Besides, the event of the thief on the cross is so much deeper than meets the eyes.

The next big thing we should consider is that Scriptures teach us there is no such thing as being saved and having the pause button on our Christian life perpetually pressed until He comes. Christ had a lot of followers who did not really believe in Him but wanted something from Him. We also know from Scriptures that a relationship with Him is a dynamic one. Therefore, if indeed we have received Him, we need to do the next best thing He asks of us, which is taking up our cross and go on with Him as His follower. The choice is clear here. So, instead of examining God, I would suggest that we learn to examine our actions, motives, and attitudes first. It is incomprehensible to see how many professed Christians simply dismiss some of the examples we have in the Bible as to how God will be dealing with His own people who are not able to hold fast in the faith. In Matthew 25:1-13, we have the story of the 5 foolish virgins who did not have oil, which incidentally, represented the work of our faith, the faith that keeps you going forward with Him. We also have the Parable of the Seed in Luke 8:13, and what about the Parable of the Talents and the demise of the last servant in Matthew 25:30? Sadly most of us do not understand how important it is to live Christianity with a spiritual balance that is found solely through an exchanged life WITH and IN Christ (1 John 3:1-3 & Colossians 3:3-4.) the exchanged life simply means that He has become your whole life while your life is in Him. Strangely when this is known to your soul, you can see this paradox with your spiritual eyes and it all seems so simple.

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Life On Earth Has Never Been About Us!

When God deemed you privileged enough to experience what it means to live a life on earth according to his purpose, it is something personal and powerful. I remember in 2005 when I began to go though the wilderness torments, just for a moment which even today seems a life time flashed before me, He showed me how that everything He was going to put me through had nothing to do with me and it was not about me. That was the strangest thing to see how all the pain, the loss, the hardships, and all the adversities even though they were happening to me were not about me. Of course back then I assumed that the episode that I was going through was going to last only a few months. I am glad God did not show me the whole path that I was going to go through for seven years in the wilderness. I would have been spooked and miss out on righteousness, knowledge, wisdom, patience, Agape love, intimacy, faith and all that I have found through going  forward with Him.

I still remember how baffled I was to live out the beauty of being born for a purpose, yet I was puzzled as to how did we manage to make things so much about us. This vision God showed me was not meant just for me. Through it, I understood that God was totally misunderstood by us. I felt like a human being was more like an experiment that has gone wrong. Through the capabilities He put in us, we used them to turn against Him. Each one of us was meant to be a tiny part of a much bigger picture. We are like the tiny pixels that make up the element of a digital picture. Or another comparison would be the tiny fibers of a thread that is used to put together and weave a canvas

We have nothing; absolutely nothing we can offer God that would satisfy Him. The reason is that nothing that we possess belongs to us. Every breath we take, our finances big or small, our possessions, our children, our knowledge etc, all belong to Him. Even the first commandment that is so dear to His heart, we cannot even come close to loving Him if He does not put His Agape Love in our heart, He cannot accept our love because our love is not a selfless love. The only prize possession we possess and that He is after is us coming back to Him so that we can be put back into a relationship where once again He is the Master. The only way possible to do that is through a surrender of the self back to Him.  He wants us to do it, because we recognize who we are in Him. In our helplessness we have come to realize that without Him we are incapable of taking care of ourselves.  He alone has the schematics of our lives. Anything else we create on our own is apart from Him and His vision for us.

Through this revelation, God wanted to impart to me the fact that my life was not about me at all. He succeeded. It is funny, all these years I have been so busy focussing on learning to live a life where He was given His proper place (my Creator) and role (my Master) that I forgot to look at this experience in any other way. That is until this morning when I started reading Oswald Chambers devotional

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Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest"

Devotional for November 5

Partakers Of His Sufferings

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." — 1 Peter 4:13

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for you at all, they are meant to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what transpires in other souls so that you will never be surprised at what you come across. Oh, I can't deal with that person. Why not? God gave you ample opportunity to soak before Him on that line, and you barged off because it seemed stupid to spend time in that way.

The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God's aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the "long, long trail."

Are we partakers of Christ's sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say - ' 'Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!"

Copyright Statement
Taken from 'My Utmost for His Highest', by Oswald Chambers. © l935 by Dodd Mead & Co., renewed © 1963 by the Oswald Chambers Publications Assn., Ltd., and is used by permission of Barbour Publishing, Uhrichsville, Ohio. All rights reserved.

Examine Yourself!

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This is such a tall order for those of us who call ourselves Christians. When I was not walking in the Spirit yet, I used to wonder about how do I do this in the light of God’s Word. I know to some people it sounds stupid to ask such a question when it is written down in the Bible in black and white. So finally, I concurred with those who kept telling me the definition of this verse simply meant that everything in my life has to pass the test of God’s Word. While the explanation did not help and did not answer the “how” part of my question I assumed I had to let it go. As I learned through the Holy Spirit, to examine myself in the light of God’s Word according to His standards, I understood why it was difficult for people to answer this question properly.  Simply put, this command can leave you like a dog chasing its tail.

I realized two important things: first the awesome job of the Holy Spirit never let me be satisfied with head knowledge, always calling upon me to come up higher and draw near to God. Even though I did not know yet how to hear Him or communicate with Him. The second thing is that if you are not walking in the Spirit, then examining yourself in the light of God’s Word is as clear to your soul as someone who is born blind, yet you are telling this person to behold the beauty of the stars in the sky. Without God’s grace, there is no way I would have known that I was not examining my thoughts in the light of His Word. Every time I recall how He pursued me and never let me be satisfied with shallow understanding and my own explanations of things, I cannot help but feel privileged to be amongst those fortunate enough to be living under His grace. It is certainly not because of who I am but because of who He is.  

When you examine your thoughts in the light of His Word, the end result is you choosing to live out His truth. Not the truth according to how you see it in your own interpretation of things. But rather how He sees it.  Here is where we Christians we get in trouble, we cannot know the truth if the Holy Spirit is not revealing God’s Word to us. We cannot know the truth if our soul does not go forward possessing Christ within. In this simple command “examine yourself”, everything collides. The truth is no less than Him in all His fullness. The truth is living a righteous life, and a true righteous life means you are living in oneness with Him so you can partake in His righteousness. It also means living an obedient life, not a life where you decide on a case by case basis which one of His Word suits you best. Can you see where I am going with this?  While there are a lot of Christians out there who do not bother to examine themselves, but the majority of those who actually examine themselves are not really doing it in the light of His Word. They do it according to their own understanding; hence they keep following the wrong path, They keep doing the same wrong things over and over again and Christianity keeps declining because we are not walking as we should. Righteousness, faithfulness and obedience have to be right in the middle of our examinations.

  

PRAYER: Father God, you are indeed a great God and everything you have done, through Christ has made provision for us to walk in the light. But, we do not like the light, so we hide behind excuses which affect drastically our walk with you. I pray saviour you would revive us in our slumber to see how important meeting your standard is to you and that your Word will not come back void to you. Teach us to fear you. Do whatever it takes to bring us back to the reality of Christ’s Cross. Help us my Lord! 

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Commitment To The Faith

 

In my book "Apprehended & Apprehending" I have a small chapter about commitment. The reason commitment is so important to me and I felt I had to include it in the book is because while I had no idea what it meant to walk in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit was hard at work in the background to help me come up higher. I realize He has never let me be satisfied with my own explanations of the Word of God in the Bible. Pushing people to not be satisfied with data tucked away while living in the flesh, makes knowing someone like me, a little bit annoying if you like your comfort zone. It is harder if you are an immediate member of my family. But, in my defense, I have no idea how to live the Christian life any other way because the Holy Spirit targeted me right at the onset of Salvation.  (Although I suspect He targets all of us) I shared almost throughout every chapter of my book how He called me to come up higher over and over again. Since I talked about it at length, I will refrain from going into more details.

You see, while some professed Christians are busy separating Salvation, discipleship commitment and grace to excuse their behaviors God showed me they are all one in the same according to His standards at work in us. I was surprised to find out that Christ’s call to us in Mathew 16:24 “to take up our cross and follow” actually meant “make the commitment, come up higher, live like you have a Master and surrender to me at any cost.”  Later on, I was more surprised to find out that not only this is Salvation being worked out in me, but the strength to do all these above were in Him,  through His grace alone.  This walk, the Holy Spirit was constantly working in the background to get me to question what I understood only in the flesh, in order to get to the point where I would make the commitment to follow and step into my discipleship role. Indeed, making the commitment to Him to let Him be the Master of your life it is not an easy thing to do. When you make this commitment you know what you have done is in effect what all the other disciples in the Bible did as they left everything behind and follow Christ on the onset of His ministry. The commitment to follow Him, if it is done with the right understanding, attitude, motive and with the Holy Spirit makes you realize that you are aware you found something that deserve your full attention. You feel, there is a Master in town now, and you have to go with Him to hear what He has to say. Like Paul turning his back away from his honourable position with Gamael, like Peter leaving his lucrative fishing business behind, like Matthew the tax collector who left his booth and lucrative business to follow and so forth.  

Just in case you are wondering what I mean in the paragraph above when I said the right attitude, motivation and understanding it is about understanding we have to do it knowing even though it will hurt but it has to be done. We know this mean we will lose complete control over our lives and we are no longer in charge. It means going forward with His plans, not ours. It means we will have to be broken and the self has to be eradicated etc. The end result will mean fellowship, oneness, pride left behind to embrace humility, deeper worship and love for Him and so forth.

Being compelled to go forward is a work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is a work of grace and there is no way left on our own we would understand the need to go forward with Him. I was pleasantly surprised to find out how all of it relates to each other. Through receiving Him I received the light. If I receive the light and I am no longer the “old me”, then I need to learn how to live the new life. While the Church put together discipleship classes and preaching the Word to get us to understand this new life, but it is my duty to hear His call to come up higher. When we go forward to become His disciple, all we are doing is making a commitment to study with the Master. Why do we need to study with the Master? Because not only He needs us to accept our position as His pupil, He also needs our total commitment so that He can make real in us the work He has started, meaning Salvation.

So, God’s call and wooing to come up higher along with Christ giving us a choice to take up our cross and follow Him, plus we have Romans 12:1 where Paul told us to surrender ourselves to Him, are all the same. Meaning same goal, same purpose and all of it is wrapped up in a commitment to this life through His grace. When you live according to His standards, all of it is there in black and white, there is no need to hold a debate. Everything we have in this Christian walk build on each other. The whole thing is like building a foundation for a house where Christ is the builder and He is putting the materials needed together to build this house. While this house starts with Salvation entering our hearts and souls, but we cannot separate it from the builder and the materials needed to erect the house.

This post was meant to be Sunday’s post. But this morning in my quiet time with Him I read Oswald Chambers, I knew this was not a coincidence and that I had to switch the post. So, instead of ending with a prayer, I will end with copying Oswald Chambers devotion for you.

Keep in mind that the second chapter of my book which is about commitment to this life is available for you to download for free. Go to my website

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Here is Oswald Chambers today's devotion

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me . . . —Galatians 2:20

These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “. . . for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ . . . .”

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?