v4.13 Not My Will, But Thine

Not My Will, But Thine

Jesus wants you to walk with Him and learn of Him. He always prepositions this offer with “If”, if you will. What is your desire? Do you want to do My will or not? Jesus wants you to be His disciple. Do you want what He wants or do you want what you want? This simple test speaks volumes about your heart toward Him.

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” Luke 9:23.

If. If what? If any man will, if any man has a heart to do My will. If any man is seeking relationship with Me and to please Me. Then I will show him things with eyes that see, then I will speak things to ears that hear, then I will give him understanding and knowledge and wisdom, then will you enter into abundant Life. Then you will enter into Peace and My Rest. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matt. 11:29.

Rest. We can’t even conceive of the bliss of being delivered from our Self. Self rages and wars and lusts to have, to hoard, to covet, to take, to consume on itSelf. Self knows nor cares about no one else. He or she is true to his name. Self has one ambition, to exalt, to feed, to worship Self and exact the same from every one else. You must see this and stop defending him. As long as you have Self pity you are his slave.

The Lord beckons you, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.” Do you not see that the first order on the agenda of being a disciple, one who follows after to learn and become like his Master, is bringing to nothing this Self. Judas did not deny himself. Judas stands as the foremost example of the tragedy of a man who would not follow Jesus. Are you a disciple or a Judas? Any man or woman who will not deny themselves may easily become a Judas for the right price.

You see that any Self ambition can be placed in the balance against your relationship with Jesus. And if you have not learned and practiced and solicited God’s help with this self denying business then Self ambition will weigh heavier than your allegiance to Jesus Christ. What is the price of your allegiance? What weighs heavily in the balance against Christ and sells Him out time and time again?

Money is often the root cause. It is the root of all evil. For the soul that is lost and separated from their heavenly Father, protection and provision are the foremost concerns. A clear indicator that you have not denied yourself is that you are always fearful about the future. This is the perpetual message being piped out by the Prince of the Air. “God can’t help you. You have to watch out for your Self. You can’t trust Him. If you don’t take matters into your own hands, then you won’t get what you (e.g. Self) want.”

If you have learned to trust Him, learned to deny your Self then you can say with confidence and by faith, “I know my heavenly Father loves me and has complete power and resources to provide for me and protect me. If it appears that I lack something or will not have enough I am being deceived. I have faith in my Father. I trust him to protect and provide for me. If I do not have it, it is because He knows that it is best for me.” Is this not what Jesus told Satan when tempted in the wilderness? “Bread is not my only food, but My Father, He is Life to Me. He will never leave Me nor forsake Me.”

So the money in the balance (i.e. currency) comes in many forms. Most often it comes in the form of what I have to do to get what I (Self) want. And we listen and obey Self all day in this regard (yet not all of us, not you right? ;). We see what Self says we want and need, we listen to Self’s plan for getting it and set out like a slave to do his will. Self assures us of our right to be happy. It is our right to be happy isn’t it? Not even remotely. “Thy will, not mine.” If you are a child of God you have no rights. If you are a child of God you have a lot of duty — love one another, keep the commandments, be ye therefore holy, come ye out from among them, do not love the world, etc.

All those rights you give yourSelf are lies and very marketable deceptions of the enemy, like the ones sold in the Garden. Are you buying all this stuff?

Listen to what Oswald Chambers says:

“It is not the bad things that are the stumbling-block to becoming a disciple, anyone will give up sin and wrong if he knows how to, but will I give up the “rightest” thing I have got, viz., my right to myself? will I crown Jesus as Lord? Whenever Our Lord talks about discipleship that is what He bases it on, the giving up of my right to myself—“ . . . let him deny himself.” Many are called, but few prove the choice ones, that is, few of us take up the cross and follow Jesus, the reason being not that we are irreligious and bad, but we don’t prefer that Jesus should be Lord.

We like to hear about deliverance from hell and forgiveness of sins, but this comes a bit too close, this demands too much, and we back out. “Upon this many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him” (rv), they went back from following Jesus and never became actual disciples. If I do become a disciple my career may have to be ruined, am I prepared for it? is He worth it? “IF any man would come after Me . . .” “If” means, “You don’t need to unless you like, but you won’t be of any account to Me in this life unless you do.” Wherever Christian experience is proving unsatisfactory it is because the Holy Spirit is still battling around this one point, my right to myself, and until that is deliberately given over by me to Jesus Christ I will never have the relationship to Him He asks for.”

So God places Jesus Christ in the balance against any and everything in this world system. (And there are a lot of things in this world system: money, fame, health, power, material things, even your affection for your family, anything and everything that Satan can use to further his purpose), Now they are not all there at once, but essentially they are. You must not love the world. God will systematically ask you to give up these things, He will place them opposite your relationship to Jesus Christ.

Self will join hands with the ruler of this world system and assure you that you have rights to these things that the world offers. After all, “everyone is doing it, having it, enjoying it”. Not everyone. Those who are following Christ have denied themselves, taken up their cross and are following Him.

Its a tough sell. And only those who want to do God’s will choose this life. Those who want to follow Self and his will deny Christ. They want to exercise their own Self assigned “rights”. I can’t say for sure where this places them in eternity. I just know that I want to please God and do His will. I am not interested in my will.

Not my will, but Thine be done.

v300 A Bird in the Hand is Worth… ?

A Bird in the Hand is Worth… ?

“If you hold it too tightly you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.” – Tommy Lasorda, The Artful Dodger

We hold everything too tightly except Him. We must cling to Him and let go of everything else. Instead we cling to everything and anything else but God. We make our family, our job, our children, our money, our work, our happiness, our health, our pleasure, and anything but God our joy and desire.

There is nothing you need so desperately as to know Him personally. He knows that you hold all of these above Him and He looks at you with compassion. “How long My child, how long will you hold to that which can never save you, can never love you, can never satisfy you. Come to Me.”

What are you holding onto that is so important you cannot release it? What is the bird in your hand, the thing you have and will not let go in faith to trust your Heavenly Father? He knows you need these things, but He also knows that you need to trust Him more than that thing in your hand. Let it go.

Carefully careless. That is a phrase used often by Oswald Chambers. It is the essence of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We must release everything in our hand and trust that if we need it He will restore it, even better and more when once we offer it to Him.

If you cannot take everything you possess and bring it before Him with open hand and offer it to Him as a reasonable sacrifice, even to your very life, then you are holding too tightly to that thing. It will be the thing that will keep you from relationship.

Do not deceive yourself and believe that you can have an intimate relationship with God when you place a greater value on the things you hold to. He is not mocked. He may not ask you to sell everything immediately, but if He sees your eye on the thing, He will ask for it. Let go of that bird in the hand, if it is from God it will come back.

Oswald says in his treatment of “Spiritual Disenchantment and Delight”:

“It is necessary to be detached from things and then come back to them in a right relationship. A sense of property is a hindrance to spiritual growth, that is why so many of us know nothing about communion with Jesus Christ.
When we are detached from things on the inside the fury of desire burns itself out. The attitude is not one born of external detachment, that is atheistic, Paul told Timothy to beware of those who teach abstinence from meats and marriage. The detachment is not to be that of an æsthete but that which springs from being in perfect communion with God. Our Lord’s external life was so social that the men of His day, who were externally detached, said of Him, “Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber.”† They were detached externally, but not in spirit; Jesus Christ was detached in His disposition, but not externally. Those of us who are spiritual are hopelessly blind to God’s purpose; the Spirit of God is all the time trying to make us detached in mind in order to bring us into real communion with God. God is trying to educate us in inner martyrdom and we won’t have it, we get tired of being educated spiritually.”

In the end it is this willingness to let God have your life, your things and your desires that will tell on your heart, whether you love Him or not.

“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Luke 9:23-24.

Open your hands and let go that which you are holding that your Father may give you perfect gifts.

Here is a poem I have shared before but bears another telling:

Give it to God

Just as my child brings all his broken toys
with tears for me to mend,

I took all my broken dreams to God
because He was my friend.

But then instead of leaving Him in peace
to work alone,

I hung around and tried to help
with ways that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,
“How could you be so slow?”

“What could I do my child,” He said,
“You never did let go.”