Are You Being Saved? Are You looking to God?

I know I mentioned to you on several occasions that the Bible is about “you are saved”  “you are being saved” and “you will be saved.” While there are three specific verses that refer to three tenses of Salvation from God, the whole bible when understood in the light of the Spirit, reads this way that we do not need to nit pick at those verses.

Sometimes, I do it on purpose by not giving you a verse for the simple reason, in my ministry, the people God calls me to serve, most of them do not have problem with Bible knowledge; it is not because of lack of knowing oodles of Bible verses by heart. The problem is that they do not know what they mean in a practical way. Knowing the Word of God is not the same as living the Word of God. Satan and all his demons know the Word of God, yet they are not changed by it.

The Word of God is alive because the Word of God is none other than our Redeemer Jesus-Christ who died for us. We do not get nourished by looking at food; we feed on it and let it take its course inside of us to keep us healthy and alive. Amazingly, the food once inside of us knows where to plug each nutrient because it knows which part of our body needs to be fed with it. In the same way, so it is with the Word of God.

I found in my Christian walk with God, those three little words “Look unto me” are of the utmost importance in my walk with Him. While at first, we will find those three little words demand such great discipline to learn to practice His presence and look to Him all day long and every day. But, once we make the effort, we find that the Holy Spirit is right there empowering us to live this life. Not only that, He does so much work inside of us,  for us and in us that we learn to become this person. Not mechanically though. 

Today’s devotional from Oswald Chambers, is one where we have to learn to settle it at once inside of us and make our first mandate, the first act of worship, first hunger, first love and first commitment to “look to Him” – It is the same as seeking first the Kingdom of God and all will be added onto you. This awesome Christian walk we have in Him, the service we do as an extension of who we have become in Him, this life of beholding Him, being transformed by Him, supernatural ministry etc., all of it, He adds it into our lives and He is glorified through us when we get our priority straight.

How do I know that I know what I am talking about? Well, I used to be so busy in the Church that I was running like a chicken with its head cut off. When God told me that it was time to go with Him, He told me it was time that I looked onto Him, He took my hands like a child and I still remember the regrets, and pain in my heart because I knew I needed to leave it all behind. I still remember how my heart mourned. But, it was needed so that I could get my priority straight. It was needed so that I could stop doing Christianity and become a Christian instead.

There is one thing the Holy Spirit taught me which was weird at the time, He said to me, to stop wanting anything from Him, not even His gifts. So, my prayer time became about His glory and praises. As I am writing this morning, I have to confess that I could not help sobbing. My sobbing turned into wailing, because I still remember when I learned to incorporate this practice in my life, I was living a life that seemed to be out of this world, as if heaven opened up. He withheld nothing from me. This morning I was wailing because I realized how much I need to incorporate this kind of worship back into my life. I was also convicted by the Spirit. My wailing also came from the fact that I felt as if I put God in the same position the Israelites put Him where He had to recall our love (Him and I). It felt like I hurt my daddy in such a big way. And I felt like a hypocrite. I have been busy with making sure I follow, making sure I remain plugged into Him, I obey etc. 

It is rather strange to see that, in focusing on being right with Him to make this life about Him, when He shows you how you miss out on such dedicated times of praises to Him, this life of being right with Him, pale in comparison.  My heart understands the lesson He is teaching me this morning. Here it is: while I focus on being right with Him, it is really about me, it is what He is doing for me. But when I spend hours glorifying and praising Him through songs and intentionally sitting still at His feet while wanting nothing for me, I make it about Him. I remember I used to wake up at 4:30 Am, just so that I can make the time to sit at His feet before I go to work at 9: Am. I realize I miss Him in this way.  

Anyway, before I got lost in my own thoughts, I started this post because of Oswald Chambers’s devotion today. So, I will leave you with him!

May the ascended Christ bless you!

Am I Looking To God?

01

22

2013

Look to Me, and be saved . . . —Isaiah 45:22

Do we expect God to come to us with His blessings and save us? He says, “Look to Me, and be saved . . . .” The greatest difficulty spiritually is to concentrate on God, and His blessings are what make it so difficult. Troubles almost always make us look to God, but His blessings tend to divert our attention elsewhere. The basic lesson of the Sermon on the Mount is to narrow all your interests until your mind, heart, and body are focused on Jesus Christ. “Look to Me . . . .”

Many of us have a mental picture of what a Christian should be, and looking at this image in other Christians’ lives becomes a hindrance to our focusing on God. This is not salvation— it is not simple enough. He says, in effect, “Look to Me and you are saved,” not “You will be saved someday.” We will find what we are looking for if we will concentrate on Him. We get distracted from God and irritable with Him while He continues to say to us, “Look to Me, and be saved . . . .” Our difficulties, our trials, and our worries about tomorrow all vanish when we look to God.

Wake yourself up and look to God. Build your hope on Him. No matter how many things seem to be pressing in on you, be determined to push them aside and look to Him. “Look to Me . . . .” Salvation isyours the moment you look.

courtesy of: http://utmost.org/

Most of Us Have Been Misinterpreting Life

Most of us have been misinterpreting life and what God is doing for a long time. “I think I am just trying to get god to make my life work easier,” a client of mine confessed, but he could have been speaking for most of us. We’re asking the wrong questions. Most of us are asking, “God, why did you let this happen to me?” Or, “God why won’t you just---------“ (fill in the blank—help me succeed, get my kids to straighten out, fix my marriage—you know what you've been winning about). But, to enter into a journey of initiation with God requires a new set of questions: What are you trying to teach me here? What issues in my heart are you trying to raise through this? What is it you want me to see? What are you asking me to let go of? In truth, God has been trying to initiate you for a long time. What is in the way is how you've mishandled your wound and the life you've constructed as a result.

“Men are taught over and over when they are boys that a wound that hurts is shameful.” notes Robert Bly in Iron John. Like a man who’s broken his leg in a marathon, he finishes the race even if he has to crawl and he doesn't say a word about it. A man’s not supposed to get hurt; he’s certainly not supposed to let it really matter. We've seen too many movies where the good guy takes an arrow, just breaks it off, and keeps on fighting; or maybe he gets shot but is still able to leap across a canyon and get the bad guys. And so most men minimize their wound. King David (a guy who’s hardly a pushover didn't act like that at all. “I am poor and needy,” he confessed openly, “and my heart is wounded within me” (ps.109:22)

Or perhaps they’ll admit it happened, but deny it was a wound because they deserve it. Suck it up, as the saying goes. The only thing more tragic than the tragedy that happens to us is the way we handle it.

Taken from “The Ransomed Heart – a Collection of Devotional Readings from John Eldredge

Wild at heart, 104-6  

Spiritual Plateau and Service

When you read Oswald Chambers's devotion for January 19 what you find is that God never changes. God still works in our lives the same way today. I know I use the word wilderness a lot in most of my posts. Some people do not like it and feels the wilderness is only for some of us. Who am I to try and convince them they are wrong and perhaps they will realize it when it is too late?

In Genesis 15, after the lavish promises where Abraham trusted God to the point where God was pleased because of his faith in Him, it is significant to see what happen to Abraham in verse 12.

After that God remained silent and did not appear to Abraham for over a decade. Unlike us, Abraham had no Bible and was not swamped with Biblical materials. Some people interpret verse 12 as if it was just an isolated incident. But, it was not. Nor that it is something we should dismiss in our walk with God. Abraham was going to be tested, grow in his faith, die to self, and learned obedience to the one and only God. 

Abraham went from being a coward to slowly becoming the father of faith. Abraham went through a wilderness time of his own, where he had to learn to get to know God at a much deeper level where he could become totally devoted to Him. While He made a lot of mistakes along the way, but he kept growing according to God’s standards. We see that in him because he did not hesitate a second to give up Isaac the son that he cherished more than anything in the world. In him, there was no more double mindedness like he showed before. There was no compromising, and nothing else in his life was competing with the life he had in Him.

You say what does this have to do with spiritual plateau?

It has everything to do with our spiritual plateau. When we have been Christian for so many years and yet, we do not know what it means inwardly to live wholeheartedly for Him. We have no idea how sweet it tastes, to reach the place where you know you truly belong to Him,  because He has set you apart for Himself. I am going to clarify this further by saying, belonging to God, being set apart for His service are not the things we say just because they are in the Bible, but rather something you become inwardly. It is not elusive or assumed. All of us Christians, as we keep moving forward with Him, we apprehend those things. Furthermore, these things that we are suppose to apprehend, are not activities for Him or just desires in the heart anymore. No, we go beyond that, and like Paul not only we have been apprehended by Him, we know that we keep apprehending the spiritual life inside, and we also know we are ploughing “full steam ahead” toward the goal. IT IS THE REAL THING! –

Failing to allow God to do His work in us through the wilderness process, a process where He hides from us and the pain of the separation is utterly distressful to the soul. Yet, you have to keep going, keep trusting, keep loving and living for Him. Through the process we become, holy, we are sanctified and set apart for Him as we lose the self.

We cannot live with some sort of half commitment to Him and expect to get there. How do we know we are not fully committed? Well, we know because we do not like the idea of Him having full control and the unknown that it brings into our lives. So we make the decision not to turn our will over to Him!

Anyone who has ever been honest will tell you exactly that. I have someone very dear to me who would say, “I don’t mind telling God that I surrender to Him, in fact I say it to Him all the time, but when push comes to shove I chose my path.”  Throughout the discussion he said to me, every time God brings him to a place where he is forced to chose God’s path and the more certain one that allow him to provide for his family, he always chose to go with what he knows. This is someone on the outside who appears so well put together that he is sought after by pastors to become a pastor. He is involved in service, very well educated, eloquent, great knowledge of the Bible, and so on, yet he is living a spiritual plateau because it has been two decades now since he has been a Christian.

 When we fail the full surrender process, two things for sure take place. The first one is that we have to learn to live within the limit of our spiritual plateau. We look like people who reached the highest post they can reach in their jobs because of their bosses or their education and skills would allow them to go. Yet, they cannot leave their jobs. So, they learn to compensate.  So when we reach this kind of spiritual plateau, service to God becomes a crutch.

The second thing you can be sure of is that through the spiritual plateau, you violate His doctrines left right and center. Perhaps you do not agree with that. Once again I would tell you if you knew God personally and understood His standards according to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, you would agree.

What are doctrines?

Doctrines are simply the basic theology of the Christian faith according to God’s teaching and standards.  Through your spiritual plateau, righteousness, holiness, and thing like obedience escape you. I do not have to list more, but, living the Christian life in the confinement of spiritual plateau, we violate three big doctrines right there. Not only that in God’s eyes we are in no better place than someone who belongs to a church where his or her denomination does not teach about certain doctrines. If anything, God holds us more accountable to the fact that we are aware of His doctrines yet, we chose to ignore them in our assumptions and disobedience to Him.

God does not hold against us the fact that we belong to the wrong denomination, but He does hold against us the fact that in our stubbornness and disobedience our pride and ego stopped us from finding Him and enjoying intimacy with Him and He holds against us the fact that we are not allowing the Holy Spirit to move freely in our hearts to get us where we need to be with Him. We do not get to the spiritual plateau by mistake. We get there through disobedience, an unwillingness to be righteous in His sight. Unwillingness to find out about His standards as we convince ourselves that what we have is good enough. The very fact that we are not propelled to go forward to make His standards, ours, says that we do not have a personal relationship with Him and we do not know Him.  We have bought into the doctrine of cheap grace and a lot of us have become accustomed to comparing ourselves to the next Christian, instead of Him.

The remedy to spiritual plateau is obedience to its fullest in total surrender. Once we do that, the Holy Spirit brings the gift of holy repentance in our hearts, takes away the callousness of our consciences and open our spiritual eyes to see.

  

Oswald Chambers said: “Jealously guard your relationship with God. Jesus prayed “that they may be one just as We are one”-with nothing in between (John 17:22). Keep your whole life continually open to Jesus Christ. Don’t pretend to be open with Him. Are you drawing your life from any source other than God Himself? If you are depending on something else as your source of freshness and strength, you will not realize when His power is gone.

Being born of the Spirit means much more than we usually think. It gives us a new vision and keeps us absolutely fresh for everything through the never-ending supply of the life of God.”

Regeneration Last Part 5

This is the last post of the regeneration. As I mentioned in the first post, even though I come from a conservative Baptist Church who did not believe in regeneration as a second experience, I believed what I was told, and I never heard a sermon about it. As far as I was concerned, I put the matter to rest believing the proponent of regeneration or second blessings were a bunch of idiots. I believed in my pastor so much, that I assumed he was right and regeneration or what some people call a second blessing was not needed. I will not talk about my experience here because I have already explained enough of it in my book “Apprehended & Apprehending” But, suffice to say regeneration which is when you are born from above is needed.

by J. C. Ryle

There is a natural part in every congregation, and there is a spiritual part; and few indeed are the churches where we should not be constrained to cry, Lord, here are many called—but very few chosen. The kingdom of God is no mere matter of lips and knees and outward service—it must be within a man, seated in the best place of heart; and I will not hesitate to tell you I fear there are many living members of churches who are exceedingly dead professors.

Examine yourselves, then, I pray you, whether you are born again. Have you good solid reasons for thinking that you have put off the old man which is corrupt, and put on the new man which is created after God in holiness? Are you renewed in the spirit of your minds? Are you bringing forth the fruits of the flesh or the fruits of the Spirit? Are you carnally minded or heavenly minded? Are your affections with the world or with God? Are you natural men or are you spiritual men? Oh! but it were no charity in me to keep back this weighty truth; and it will be no wisdom in you to put off and delay considering it.

Are you born again? Without it no salvation! It is not written that you may not—or yet that you will have some difficulty—but it is written that you cannot without it see the kingdom of God. Consider with yourselves how fearful it will be to be shut out; to see God's kingdom afar off, like the rich man in the parable, and a great gulf between; how terrible to go down to the pit from under the very pulpit, well satisfied with your own condition—but still not born again. There are truly many roads to perdition—but none so melancholy as that which is traveled on by professing Christians—by men and women who have light and knowledge and warning and means and opportunity and yet go smiling on as if sermons and holiness were not meant for them—or as if hell was a bed of roses—or as if God was a liar and could not keep His word.

  

Are you born again? I do not want to fill your heads—but to move your hearts; it is not a matter of course that all who go to church shall be saved; churches and ministers are meant to rouse you to self-inquiry, to awaken you to a sense of your condition; and next to that grand question, "Have you taken Christ for your Savior?" there comes the second point, "Are you born again?"

Beloved, if you love life, search and see what is your condition. What though you find no tokens for good: better a thousand times to know it now and live, than to know it too late and die eternally!

Praised be God, it is a doctrine bound round with gracious promises: no heart so hard but the Holy Spirit can move it; many a one could set his seal to that, and tell you that he was darkness, darkness that could be felt—but is now light in the Lord. Many of the Corinthians were bad as the worst among you—but they were washed, they were sanctified, they were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Many of the Ephesians were as completely dead in sins as any of you—but God quickened them, and raised them up, and created them anew unto good works. Examine yourselves and draw near to God with prayer, and He shall draw near to you—but if you ask not, you shall not have.

As for me, I make my supplication unto God, who can make all things new, that His Spirit may touch your hearts with a deep sense of this truth, for without it my preaching is vain; that there may be a mighty shaking and revival among the dry bones; that you may never rest until you are indeed new men and can say, Verily we were dead but we are now alive, we were lost but we are now found.

Regeneration Part 4

by J. C. Ryle

To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind and a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings and new dislikings, new fears, new joys, new sorrows, new love to things once hated, new hatred to things once loved, new thoughts of God and ourselves and the world and the life to come, and the means whereby that life is attained. And it is indeed a true saying that he who has gone through it is a new man, a new creature, for old things are passed away—behold, he can say, all things are become new! It is not so much that our natural powers and faculties are taken away and destroyed; I would rather say that they receive an utterly new bias and direction. It is not that the old metal is cast aside—but it is melted down and refined and remolded, and has a new stamp impressed upon it, and thus, so to speak, becomes a new coin.

This is no external change, like that of Herod, who did many things and then stopped—or of Ahab, who humbled himself and went in sackcloth and walked softly; nor is it a change which can neither be seen nor felt. It is not merely a new name and a new notion—but the implanting of a new principle which will surely bear good fruit. It is opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf; it is loosing the tongue of the dumb, and giving hands and feet to the maimed and lame—for he who is born again no longer allows his members to be instruments and servants of unrighteousness—but he gives them unto God, and then only are they properly employed.

To be born again is to become a member of a new family by adoption, even the family of God; it is to feel that God is indeed our Father, and that we are made the very sons and daughters of the Almighty; it is to become the citizen of a new state, to cast aside the bondage of Satan and live as free men in the glorious liberty of Christ's kingdom, giving our King the tribute of our best affection, and believing that He will keep us from all evil. To be born again is a spiritual resurrection, a faint likeness indeed of the great change at last—but still a likeness; for the new birth of a man is a passage from death to life; it is a passage from ignorance of God to a full knowledge of Him, from slavish fear to childlike love, from sleepy carelessness about Him to fervent desire to please Him, from lazy indifference about salvation to burning, earnest zeal; it is a passage from strangeness towards God to heartfelt confidence, from a state of enmity to a state of peace, from worldliness to holiness, from an earthly, sensual, man-pleasing state of mind to the single-eyed mind that is in Christ Jesus. And this it is to be born of the Spirit.

Beloved, time will not allow me to go further with this subject today. I have endeavored to show you generally why we must all be born again, and what the new birth means; and next Sunday, if the Lord wills, I purpose to show you the manner and means by which this new birth usually comes.

It only remains for me now to commend this matter most solemnly to your consciences. Were it a doctrine of only second-rate importance—were it a point a man might leave uncertain and yet be saved, like Church government or election—I would not press it on you so strongly—but it is one of the two great pillars of the gospel. On the one hand stands salvation by free grace for Christ's sake—but on the other stands renewal of the carnal heart by the Spirit. We must be changed as well as forgiven; we must be renewed as well as redeemed.

And I commend this to you all the more because of the times you live in. Men swallow down sermons about Christ's willingness and Christ's power to save, and yet continue in their sins. They seem to forget there must be the Spirit's work within us, as well as Christ's work for us—there must be something written on the table of our hearts. The strong man, Satan, must be cast out of our house, and Jesus must take possession; and we must begin to know the saints' character experimentally on earth—or we shall never be numbered with them in heaven. Christ is indeed a full and sufficient title to heaven—but we must have about us some fitness for that blessed abode.

I will not shrink from telling you that this doctrine cuts every congregation in two; it is the line of separation between the good fish and the bad, the wheat and the tares. 

The Call For Service

On the 10 of January, 2013 I mentioned in my post that “we are living in a time where anyone can be a pastor or teacher, because they feel like it or they want to work for God.” This post will shed some lights on my comments. A short time after I entered the wilderness with God, I heard the call like Isaiah did. Strangely, God called me at a time where I was dealing with one of the biggest crisis in my life. It was also amazing to see how my crisis did not matter. This personal call from Him brought pure joy and ecstasy to the soul. When the vision and visitation stopped, I was back to myself, I not only had the joy of what I experienced, but I also had a burning and passionate desire and need to get involved in evangelism and saved souls.

Everyone around me interpreted my passion as a need to go "now"…. Act on it now… God has spoken, there is no need to wait, and you have your orders. I did not want to be disobedient to God, so I started doing the preparation to go. Something was terribly wrong inside of me as I started preparing to go. There was such a deep sense of sadness within and if I had talked to anyone else they would have told me that it was the work of Satan. I will spare you the details of what happened next. Suffice to say, the sadness I felt was my moving forward to complete the vision on my own, caused the Holy Spirit to grieve.

There were times I was so disappointed with the waiting process that I wanted to take matters into my hands. It turns out my interpretation of the call had nothing to do with God’s interpretation. If I did not wait for Him, I would have been a missionary overseas, thinking that I am doing something awesome for God. Yet, I would have been out of His will for me. God wanted me right here in North America to deal with lost souls right in the Church. At one point, I was disappointed that my calling was not for lack of a better word “a bigger deal”.  As I get to know God more and more I realize the smallest and the most menial tasks has great values in God’s eyes, if accomplished through Him.

In fact, to help me through the waiting process after years in the wilderness, God had to show me how someone working all his or her life on the mission field might not be as pleasing to Him as someone doing the most menial task. He told me point blank, “I would prefer that you work with me for three years than having you work for me for twenty years.” He showed me the impact of a lifetime spent working for Him is basically wasted away. The only nuggets that He can use, are when He uses the person like He uses Satan to reach His elects. –- Strangely, He showed me, even when He uses someone in this manner, this does not mean he or she is not saved and that was not up to me to interpret it in this manner. –- In this vision, He shared things that I could never share with any human beings, and He did not have to tell me, I knew they were meant for me alone. But keep in mind this vision did not happen until God called me a friend of His. Notice I did not say I called Him friend, because He let you know when you reach the friendship threshold. On a side note, when God really calls you a friend, it comes with that built in awareness that He is not really your “buddy” so His friendship will never cause you to lose your reverence for Him.

As I waited for Him to make me one with Him, I not only understood even though the call is not close to what I thought it would be, I delight in doing His will.  I also found out, a big chunk of the way He wants to use me is through prayer, so He trained me to become a prayer warrior. Prayer has no barriers when we walk in the Spirit and it has no borders.  I also learned, when we are set to do His will above all else, we do not have to worry about missing out on anything. If there is an emergency, if we have to go right away, on the spot, He will let us know. While we are rushing to complete what is really “just a stirring in our hearts” we rush ahead of Him with an attitude that it is our job to complete what He started, so we forge the path. In reality, in God sight, that is disobedience, lack of trust, lack of reverence and lack of walking in the Spirit.

Sadly, some of us have gone so far ahead of Him, we have spent so many years being in the wrong fields, and some have been so financially successful in a field that He really did not choose, i.e. those building their television and books empires, we cannot go back. So we lie to ourselves, and convinced ourselves that He will be happy with it…….Wrong! Just the fact that we say it is His mandate does not make it so.

I am leaving you with Oswald Chambers devotion for today which complement this post!

The Voice of the Nature of God

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16

2013

I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ’Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’ —Isaiah 6:8

When we talk about the call of God, we often forget the most important thing, namely, the nature of Him who calls. There are many things calling each of us today. Some of these calls will be answered, and others will not even be heard. The call is the expression of the nature of the One who calls, and we can only recognize the call if that same nature is in us. The call of God is the expression of God’s nature, not ours. God providentially weaves the threads of His call through our lives, and only we can distinguish them. It is the threading of God’s voice directly to us over a certain concern, and it is useless to seek another person’s opinion of it. Our dealings over the call of God should be kept exclusively between ourselves and Him.

The call of God is not a reflection of my nature; my personal desires and temperament are of no consideration. As long as I dwell on my own qualities and traits and think about what I am suited for, I will never hear the call of God. But when God brings me into the right relationship with Himself, I will be in the same condition Isaiah was. Isaiah was so attuned to God, because of the great crisis he had just endured, that the call of God penetrated his soul. The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves. And we cannot hear anything God says. But to be brought to the place where we can hear the call of God is to be profoundly changed.

Courtesy of http://utmost.org/

Click the link here: because tomorrow's devotion is equally important to this post

Spiritual Plateau Part 2

On Tuesday December 11, 2012, I wrote a post title spiritual plateau. Today, as I was reading Oswald Chambers January 15, 2013, I knew all along one the main ingredients to avoid spiritual plateau is to know the meaning in the depth of your soul, what it means to have gone to your own funeral and learn to walk in white.

The reasons I did not want to elaborate on the post further is because it was already long enough and the second reason is that this very subject will be included in one of my upcoming books and the title will be a good indication to you. So, today I felt led by the Spirit to finish what I started.

The end result of not going to your own spiritual funeral will cause this spiritual plateau where the Holy Spirit cannot move an inch in us anymore because, the next step that is needed to continue the work has not been taken by us. God always brings us to places where, not choosing to embrace our own funeral causes us to be in our depth in disobedience. We do have the right to take other paths, but it remains exactly what it is in the eyes of God. We are forced to build on the religion of man or like the Israelites we live like those who never made it out of the wilderness because they never apprehended more of God according to His standards.

Sometimes we have refused the path He presented to us on so many occasions that we do not even realize anymore that we are not walking with Him and we have left Him behind to do our own things. As we live this life, we ought to examine ourselves and if we keep moving sideways, no matter how good it feels and look, know that something is wrong because true Christianity, and a true child of His keeps going forward. 

One of the ways to know you are moving sideways: the depth of spiritual things and intimacy with God evade you. They remain things you read through other people!

Do You Walk In White?

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15

2013

We were buried with Him . . . that just as Christ was raised from the dead . . . even so we also should walk in newness of life —Romans 6:4

No one experiences complete sanctification without going through a “white funeral”-the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crucial moment of change through death, sanctification will never be more than an elusive dream. There must be a “white funeral,” a death with only one resurrection-a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can defeat a life like this. It has oneness with God for only one purpose— to be a witness for Him.

Have you really come to your last days? You have often come to them in your mind, but have you really experienced them? You cannot die or go to your funeral in a mood of excitement. Death means you stop being. You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death. It is dying— being “baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3).

Have you had your “white funeral,” or are you piously deceiving your own soul? Has there been a point in your life which you now mark as your last day? Is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, “Yes, it was then, at my ’white funeral,’ that I made an agreement with God.”

“This is the will of God, your sanctification . . .” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Once you truly realize this is God’s will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that “white funeral” now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you.

Courtesy of: http://utmost.org/