"I'd like to share Christ, but I just don't know how!"
When God gives you an opportunity, just smile, pull out a copy of If We Never Meet Again or What If No One Warned You? and say, "Here's something I think you'll enjoy reading!"
January 13, 2024
- By Ed Powell
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"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6
Many believers are living under a spiritual illusion rather than in the reality of a personal relationship with the Lord. They conclude that their whole relationship with God, with Jesus Christ as their Savior, and with the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, is wrapped up in an "act once performed" when they were saved, rather than in a "life to be lived" after their salvation in the power of the Holy Spirit. Their attitude is that having found Him as Savior, they no longer need to seek Him. Being born again is the BEGINNING of our spiritual journey. We need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of His Word, becoming mature in our spiritual life.
David's psalms ring out with the cry of the seeker and resound with the glad song of the finder. Our beloved hymns of the faith were born in the fires of trial and adversity by those who found strength, comfort, and hope in an all-sufficient Savior. They went through those devastating encounters daring to trust Him. The reality of our faith is born when we cast all our care upon Him. It is then we see His mighty hand intercede for us in ways that are completely beyond us. It is a life of trust and obedience in a Living Savior, the Sovereign of our life.
If we are to mature spiritually and come to a deeper experience in knowing God, altering our circumstances is not God's first priority. His first concern is to ALTER OUR HEARTS and then He will enable us to deal with the needs on the outside. He wants us to learn to lean on Him and to trust Him in our trials, not to seek deliverance from the trials. It is in the trials that we learn to trust, abandon ourselves to Him, and come to know Him as never before.
Can there be a more blessed experience than to be confronted with devastating circumstances, to pray and trust Him, and to see Him do what no other one can do? We will cry out with David, "Bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me; bless His holy name." We begin to know and live in the reality of our faith, applying what we believe to every phase of our life. Our spiritual journey is one of "becoming" in the image of His Son. It is the process of His plan for each of us.
He gave His life for us, that He might give His life to us, so that He might live His life through us. Paul said, "I consider everything but loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them as rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."
From commitment to Christ, we follow with perseverance and pursue with purpose, "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, [we] press toward the goal to win the prize for which Christ has called [us] heavenward in Christ."
© 2007 by Ed Powell. Used by permission.
This page was reprinted by permission from: http://litmin.org/dare.php?date=2024-01-13&print=1
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