You Give an Inch, He Goes a Mile

This morning, after a time of confession and prayer, the Lord led me to an entry in My Utmost for His Highest on March 8th.  That’s right, an entry from 313 days ago.  And it was exactly what I needed to cement what God showed me in my time of prayer.  It deals with what we will relinquish or surrender to the Lord of ourselves in order for Him to make us, or recreate us, into what He needs us to be to be used by Him.

And that’s the whole point of the Christian life, right?  To be used by Him?  To offer ourselves as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which (based on the mercies of God) is our reasonable service” (Rom. 12:1).  Well, it’s the whole point of the Christian life for me.

As an encouragement to you, and to me, let me share the entry from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest for March 8th.  And I pray you will be as blessed, empowered, and inspired to live for Him as I was in reading it again.


The Surrendered Life

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20.

To become one with Jesus Christ, a person must be willing not only to give up sin, but also to surrender his whole way of looking at things.  Being born again by the Spirit of God means that we must first be willing to let go before we can grasp something else.  The first thing we must surrender is all of our pretense or deceit.  What our Lord wants us to present to Him is not our goodness, honesty, or our efforts to do better, but real solid sin.  Actually, that is all He can take from us.  And what He gives us in exchange for our sin is real solid righteousness.  But we must surrender all pretense that we are anything, and give up all our claims of even being worthy of God’s consideration.

Once we have done that, the Spirit of God will show us what we need to surrender next.  Along each step of this process, we will have to give up our claims to our rights to ourselves.  Are we willing to surrender our grasp on all that we possess, our desires, and everything else in our lives?  Are we ready to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?

We will suffer a sharp painful disillusionment before we fully surrender.  When people really see themselves as the Lord sees them, it is not the terribly offensive sins of the flesh that shock them, but the awful nature of the pride of their own hearts opposing Jesus Christ.  When they see themselves in the light of the Lord, the shame, horror, and desperate conviction hit home for them.

If you are faced with the question of whether or not to surrender, make a determination to go on through the crisis, surrendering all that you have and all that you are to Him.  And God will then equip you to do all that He requires of you.

Leaving Laodicea | The Survival Manual for the Coming Underground Church

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