July 31, 2016
No discussion of holiness is true or helpful without a healthy appreciation for how earnestly Satan wants to destroy us. Steal, kill, and destroy is how Jesus described it (John 10:10). Satan lured Adam and Eve to compromise one single act, one slip of holiness, and from there he has brought unspeakable carnage to the human race and to the earth. Friends, he hasn’t stopped his war against us.
After years of ignoring this reality and paying for my ignorance (which is often in us a chosen naïveté), followed by decades taking up sword and shield and fighting the good fight for myself, I have come to adore something Jesus says shortly before Gethsemane and the cross. He urges us not to let our hearts be afraid. Then he says to his close companions, “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.” (John 14:30–31)
He has no hold on me?!! Do you have any idea what a relief this would be? Just imagine for a moment if you were fortressed to all the ploys, accusations, temptations, snares, assaults, and deceptions of the enemy. What would it be like if they had no effect on you? Your life would be a joy to live.
Todays devotion reminded me of our conversation yesterday...
AS YOU LISTEN to birds calling to one another, hear also My Love-call to you. I speak to you continually: through sights, sounds, thoughts, impressions, scriptures. There is no limit to the variety of ways I can communicate with you. Your part is to be attentive to My messages, in whatever form they come. When you set out to find Me in a day, you discover that the world is vibrantly alive with My Presence. You can find Me not only in beauty and birdcalls, but also in tragedy and faces filled with grief. I can take the deepest sorrow and weave it into a pattern for good.
Search for Me and My messages, as you go through this day. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with your whole being.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The measure of the worth of our public activity for God is the private profound communion we have with Him.… We have to pitch our tents where we shall always have quiet times with God, however noisy our times with the world may be. My Utmost for His Highest, January 6, 736 R
Many of us appear to be all right in general, but there are still some areas in which we are careless and lazy; it is not a matter of sin, but the remnants of our carnal life that tend to make us careless. Carelessness is an insult to the Holy Spirit. We should have no carelessness about us either in the way we worship God, or even in the way we eat and drink.
Not only must our relationship to God be right, but the outward expression of that relationship must also be right. Ultimately, God will allow nothing to escape; every detail of our lives is under His scrutiny. God will bring us back in countless ways to the same point over and over again. And He never tires of bringing us back to that one point until we learn the lesson, because His purpose is to produce the finished product. It may be a problem arising from our impulsive nature, but again and again, with the most persistent patience, God has brought us back to that one particular point. Or the problem may be our idle and wandering thinking, or our independent nature and self-interest. Through this process, God is trying to impress upon us the one thing that is not entirely right in our lives.
We have been having a wonderful time in our studies over the revealed truth of God’s redemption, and our hearts are perfect toward Him. And His wonderful work in us makes us know that overall we are right with Him. “Let patience have its perfect work….” The Holy Spirit speaking through James said, “Now let your patience become a finished product.” Beware of becoming careless over the small details of life and saying, “Oh, that will have to do for now.” Whatever it may be, God will point it out with persistence until we become entirely His.
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