One point that touched me was that if we give ourselves to the Lord, He will little by little touch anything of ourselves that is not of Him and say, "This must go. Are you willing?" He desires that nothing of ourselves would remain. It mentioned that it may seem easier to resist or get out of the Lord's will, but it is blessed to just give up our struggling and fighting against God's will and allow Him to have His way in us and in our lives.
This reminds me of a verse that I really enjoyed, "Come to Me all who toil and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. (Matt. 11:28-30)
In my experience, when I've tried to resist the Lord in something He is doing in my being and in my life, I have no peace nor rest. Even though I didn't agree with or particularly like what He was doing, I realized that resisting Him was just a lost cause. It was only when I came to the Lord and surrendered my resistance to His will that I found real peace and rest. Like Matthew 11:30 says, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. To do the will of the Father, though outwardly may seem tiresome and impossible, inwardly, it is actually easy and light.
There was so much more in this 2 page section that I enjoyed. I will save the rest for another day :)
Oh Lord Jesus.
ReplyDeleteon the matter of consecrating ourselves to the Lord, In the summer training, Brother Minoru Chen kept talking about how the reason we young people dont have a absolute and thorough consecration to the Lord is because we dont see the Lord's suffering on the cross enough.
I'm glad we can just present ourselves to the Lord, and He will honor that.
It just made me realize how little i see of the Lord's suffering on the Cross. I just prayed that the Lord would show me more of himself, so that i could have an absolute and thorough consecration to the Lord for the rest of my college years.
wow! yes, I also was very impressed with that point. If we knew how much the Lord did for us, our love for Him would increase so much! And out of loving Him, we would gladly present ourselves to Him.
ReplyDeleteAnd something else I enjoyed from this reading, was that the Lord isn't asking us to do a "Christian work" for Him. Rather, He is asking us for our very life, for us to give our entire life, self, being over to Him for His purpose.
May we be those who love the Lord for what He is and what He has done for us and those who give their very life for His will and purpose!
I have been also reminded about this wonderful verse in 2 Cor. 5:14-15,
ReplyDeleteFor the love of Christ constrains us because we have judged this, that One died for all, therefore all died; And He died for all that those who live may no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and has been raised.
We judge this - He died for us, therefore we also live to Him! And daily His love constrains us, little by little, to give ourselves to Him! O, what a privilege, Lord!