Image via Wikipedia Lord's Prevailing purposeWhat discipline or instruction are you under now? For what reason or goal? What dose that say about the Lord's prevailing purpose?
The other side of the coin is even more difficult. We must learn not to take things into our own hands and try to develop our own plan. If we act on our own, we are saying to God, I don't like your plan, I am going to make myself God, I am going to take control. This I consider is the number one Sin or cause of an improper relationship with our God today. We place ourselves on God's "Board of Directors." The creation of this "board" will bring humanities downfall.
This is no different than when a child takes control of a family relationship. If the parents do what the child tells them to do, you will not have a family for long. It is unnatural and will cause grief for everyone concerned.
We either accept God as our Creator and Father or we don't. If we do; then we cannot think we can control our lives and still be his child. This is unnatural and causes grief for us, God's family and the world.
We must learn that as a child of God we must do our best, in the situations God has provides us. We must learn to trust him, his plans for us, his family and the world. Would you be embarrassed if your best friends knew your personal thoughts? Remember that God knows all of them.
(Isaiah 29:15-16)"Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing. They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can something a man has made tell him: 'You didn't make me?' Or can it say to him: 'You don't know what you are doing?'"
Very few people know the power of surrender. Most of us know only the power of resistance. We derive a kind of negative energy from holding out.
For example, we may resist our parents. We feel strong when we break the family's rules or defy our parents' admonitions. if they tell us not to stay out too late, we assert ourselves by coming home later than they advised. In a similar manner, we may defy spouses, teachers, bosses, the police, and even God.
God asks us to love him and obey his commandments (John 14:15; the book of 1 John), but we find power in "doing it our way." I remember one physically large person who stood on a chair in my office so he could get closer to God. Then he shook his fist and yelled, "I dare you, God!" Most of us chose more subtle ways to defy God, but we defy him nonetheless.
... God looks the same upon all those who submit to him. God knows he made people in different ways: some short, some tall; some outgoing, some reflective; some emotional, some intellectual. The blessed part is that God made all of us, and he knows we will come to him in different ways. What is important is that we arrive.
When I surrender to a purpose I gain power, because once I surrender I am freed from the conflict of indecision. After I surrender to Jesus Christ, no longer is part of me resisting his call. I am able to be twice as forceful, because all of me is now headed in the same direction.
(From "How Do I Submit to Jesus Christ? by David and Cheryl Aspy in Practical Christianity)
The other side of the coin is even more difficult. We must learn not to take things into our own hands and try to develop our own plan. If we act on our own, we are saying to God, I don't like your plan, I am going to make myself God, I am going to take control. This I consider is the number one Sin or cause of an improper relationship with our God today. We place ourselves on God's "Board of Directors." The creation of this "board" will bring humanities downfall.
This is no different than when a child takes control of a family relationship. If the parents do what the child tells them to do, you will not have a family for long. It is unnatural and will cause grief for everyone concerned.
We either accept God as our Creator and Father or we don't. If we do; then we cannot think we can control our lives and still be his child. This is unnatural and causes grief for us, God's family and the world.
We must learn that as a child of God we must do our best, in the situations God has provides us. We must learn to trust him, his plans for us, his family and the world. Would you be embarrassed if your best friends knew your personal thoughts? Remember that God knows all of them.
(Isaiah 29:15-16)"Those who try to hide their plans from the Lord are doomed! They carry out their schemes in secret and think no one will see them or know what they are doing. They turn everything upside down. Which is more important, the potter or the clay? Can something a man has made tell him: 'You didn't make me?' Or can it say to him: 'You don't know what you are doing?'"
Very few people know the power of surrender. Most of us know only the power of resistance. We derive a kind of negative energy from holding out.
For example, we may resist our parents. We feel strong when we break the family's rules or defy our parents' admonitions. if they tell us not to stay out too late, we assert ourselves by coming home later than they advised. In a similar manner, we may defy spouses, teachers, bosses, the police, and even God.
God asks us to love him and obey his commandments (John 14:15; the book of 1 John), but we find power in "doing it our way." I remember one physically large person who stood on a chair in my office so he could get closer to God. Then he shook his fist and yelled, "I dare you, God!" Most of us chose more subtle ways to defy God, but we defy him nonetheless.
... God looks the same upon all those who submit to him. God knows he made people in different ways: some short, some tall; some outgoing, some reflective; some emotional, some intellectual. The blessed part is that God made all of us, and he knows we will come to him in different ways. What is important is that we arrive.
When I surrender to a purpose I gain power, because once I surrender I am freed from the conflict of indecision. After I surrender to Jesus Christ, no longer is part of me resisting his call. I am able to be twice as forceful, because all of me is now headed in the same direction.
(From "How Do I Submit to Jesus Christ? by David and Cheryl Aspy in Practical Christianity)
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