Jesus wants to make you and I truly free. He wants to free me from dependence on what other people think or say or do. He wants me to be free from addiction to money, power or material possessions He wants me to depend on nothing but Him alone. Only then will I be truly free.
We have so much stuff that I bet there are things you own that you forgot you have or own things that are still brand new and unused. We think that adding one more activity, item or program to our lives will complete us. But they never will and never do.
“The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.”
Dwight L. Moody
Have you ever wondered the purpose in the Bible commanding us to give thanks? Let’s face it, does God really need our thanks? Why is it commanded? What’s the point of thankfulness? What does it accomplish in our lives? What purpose does it serve in the body of the Church? If we as Christians-the body of Christ were to be more thankful, I wonder, how would that make us different? What would change??
Every single day we must wake up and allow Christ to kill the old man. The flesh must die. The old man must be killed, the desires that raise up within you that desire things of the old man must die. Let Christ kill the old man every time he rears his ugly head. The old man will look strangely familiar—he will look more like you and be more dear to you then anyone else you know. But if Christ is to grow the New Man within you that looks more like Jesus, then the old man must go. There is no use in keeping him around, he will only drag you down to hell. The old flesh must die.
“But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
If you’re anything like me you hate it when things are out of place or not working. We like to have everything put together. I hate it when there is a task lying around that remains unfinished or an appliance that sits in my house in a definitive non-working condition. I dislike broken things. I am bugged until they are fixed and working again.
Sometimes I find myself begging God to reveal Himself personally to me. There are times, I refuse to step out in faith because I do not know how things will turn out. In essence this demonstrates my refusal to trust God. Perhaps God is looking for those who will trust Him and believe His words without seeing Him do anything miraculous in their life. Maybe God wants to see who really understands what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. The life of faith that believes what God says without miracles, without seeing, hearing, feeling anything of the divine.
