More Random Things

Just a few more from my prayer journal.....

"We must come to the place of letting go to God even the most precious of His promises and our dreams." I wrote this down a number of years ago when I realized I had made idols of some of His promises and too many of my dreams and desires. By this I mean that I was so intent on His bringing to pass in my life a promise that I had claimed or a desire I had that its realization had begun to consume me. It, or they, had become an idol. I needed to surrender the promises and dreams to Him. At some point, we must realize the danger of having our dreams and the realization of a promise becoming the focus of our life. Our focus is no longer on Him but upon the goal we want to reach, the result we want to realize. These become idols to us. God is simply a means to be used in realizing them. It can happen very easily, and our only safeguard is to surrender them, all of them, to Him. We can still have the desire and hope for the result, but we rest in Him in the midst of it all. His will for us is supreme. Christ came with a mission from His Father, to bring the message of life, forgiveness of sins, and the healing of broken hearts and spirits. He desired the fulfillment of it all, but the desire was surrendered to His Father. That's why when Satan tempted Him with the giving to Him of all the kingdoms of the world if He would serve him, He refused. He would not take the devil's counterfeit way to fulfillment. He would surrender His way, the way of the cross to Him, and trust Him. In our most cherished dreams and hopes, and the promises we stand on, can we also surrender them all to Him?

"When the Son sets us free, He expects us to be and live free. Completely free." Chris Tiegreen....Scripture tells us that "when the Son sets you free, you are free indeed." This is one of the great truths of His Word, yet it is a truth so few of us are really experiencing. When one comes to Christ in believing faith, receiving Him as Savior and Lord, the claim of sin over us is broken. In Christ we are forgiven, made new, and made whole. We have been transferred and transformed from the kingdom of darkness and death to the Kingdom of Light and Life. We have been made sons and daughters of the King and heirs of His Kingdom. Yet so many never walk in this freedom. We live like prisoners of war when the war has already been won by our Lord and Savior. It was won and sealed at the cross and in the resurrection, but the enemy convinces us that it's not really so. We have been given resurrection life, and the power that conquered sin and death, yet we continue to live in bondage to both. We are "more than conquerors" in Christ. Christ Himself said we have "all things" in Him. We are called to abundance, but we live with lack. The central reason is that we don't really know who we are in Christ, and the enemy works overtime to keep it so, to keep us in darkness. He calls us into the Light, and if we will walk in it with Him, His Word, His Life, and His presence will soak every chain from us. We will live free because we are free. This is the way He expects us to live. Calls us to live. Are we meeting His expectations?

"We seek to serve Him with whole hearts while drinking His Living Water with half a heart." Alicia Britt Chole

....Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that He offered Living Water, the water of Life. He said that those who drank the water of the well would only grow thirsty again, but that the ones who drank of His Living Water would never be thirsty again. This is true....if we will continuously drink His water. Our problem is that we so often go back to the well water of this world to slake our thirst, and we end up being even more thirsty. We may still drink of His Living Water, but not as fully or deeply. We do so, as Chloe says, with half a heart, yet we seek to serve Him with all our heart. Jesus said that out of us will flow rivers of His Living Water, but this won't happen when we take only sips of it at a time. The result is service, ministry, which becomes burdensome and tiresome. We begin to resent it and those we seek to serve. Eventually, we burn out. Too little of the water of His life flows into us and so eventually, none of His water flows out. We dry up because the richness of His Holy Spirit, His Living Water, ceases to flow into us, and so nothing flows out of us. Where, in your living for Him might this be happening? Where do you drink of His Water of Life with half a heart....or no heart at all?

Just some more random things......Blessings from Pastor O