Follow Jesus

"Then he said to the crowd, " If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross daily, and follow me."
Luke 9:23

Yes, I will follow Jesus! " we'll gladly follow the Lord around the Sea of Galilee and be fed with the five thousand. We will drink wine made from water. We will applaud the blind man who can see and stand amazed at a dead man who rises from his grave. We will follow Jesus everywhere except. . .  the cross.
   Oh, we can handle the burdens, those everyday troubles we all must shoulder. Beside, there are always other to carry our burdens. We can accept the Thorns, inconveniences that can"t be avoided. It's best to accept thorn and get on with living.
   But a cross? No, it is not our inclination to take up a cross. For unlike burdens or thorns from which we can't escape, a cross is a choice. In fact, the cross was a choice for Jesus He did not have to take it up, He could have refused it. But thankfully, He willingly took up His cross so that you and I might have power. Power to carry one another's burdens, gladly accept our thorn, and daily take up our cross and follow Jesus.
To take up your cross involves a daily choices. Perhaps your cross could be a difficult duty, a painful service, an unbelieving partner in marriage. The Lord is asking you to willingly take it on and head up the long path with Him to Calvary where pride and vanity, stubbornness and resentment are crucified.

YOUR WORKMANSHIP IS MARVELOUS

"Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it."
Psalm 139:14

While getting an eye exam recently. My doctor hauled out a piece of equipment that I hadn't seen before. I asked him what the device was, and he responded. "I'm using it to take a picture of the inside of the back of your eye "
    I was impressed that someone had invented a camera that could do that. But I was even more impressed by what my doctor could learn from that picture  He said, "we can gather a lot of details about your current health simply by looking at the back of your eye."
    My doctor's comment amazed me. It is remarkable that a person's overall health can be measured by the health of the eye. What care the Lord has taken to place these details in the bodies He has created it immediately brings to my mind the words of David, the psalmist, who reveled in God's creativity: "I will praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are your works, and that my soul knows very well" (Psalm 139:14).
    The enormous complexities of our bodies reflect the genius and wisdom of our great Creator. The wonder of His design is more than breathtaking it gives us countless reasons to worship Him.
   Lord, we are in awe of You! Thank You that You created us with such complexity and care and that You know us with such intimacy. We love You and trust You with our lives.

REVIVAL

"I have heard all about you, Lord, and I am filled with awe by the amazing things you have done. In this time of our deep need, begin again to help us, as you did in years gone by. Show us your power to save us. And in your anger, remember your mercy."

Only God can restore life no something that has died. If you find that your heart had grown cold to God, that the spiritual life of your family or church has waned, call out to God to revive you, for only He can give life. It is not your activity but your relationship with God that brings life!
    Spiritual fervor can ebb if left unattented. We all begin our walk with the Lord enthusiasticall., with an excited sense of anticipation. But over time, busyness creeps in. We become distracted and let our sin go unchallenged. We may take our relationship with God for granted and not notice the gradual decline until we find ourselves drained of spiritual vitality.
    This decent can happen in your church just as it doies in your personal life. Do you remember a time when the Holy Spirit was moving nightly in your church, and tgd members sensed God leading in an exciting direction? Are the service now lifeless and the power of God only memory?
     At a time like this it is futile to try to bring back life yourself. You can organize many activities and exhort those around you, But only God can resurrect what is dead. If God has initiated something in your life, or family, or church, only He can sustain it or revive it. If you sense that spiritual vigor gas gone out of your life or the life of your church, this is God's invitation to pray.  He wants you to intercede with Him so that He might revive His work. Jesus said that He is life.  It is unnecessary to remain spiritual lifeless when He has promised vibrant, abundantly life if you will claim it.

Conditional Promises

"If you remain in me and words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you."
John 15:7

Certain promises have strings attached. Like this one from John 15:7 true, we may ask whatever we wish, but Jesus qualifies our prayers with two important condition: we must be living in close fellowship with Him, and our requests must be in line with His will.
     Some Christian think that prayer is like a blank check. Just fill in the amount whenever you like, no matter what your spiritual condition, and God will cash it for you. Not so. When Jesus says, "Remain in me," He's talking about a consistent lifestyle of closeness to Him, not a sporadic spirituality.
    And as far as the other condition, "If my words remain in you," Jesus doesn't mean that you have to have a seminary degree or a Bible school diploma, You can known tons of theology without ever letting it grip your soul. Jesus was referring to running Scripture through your mind over and over again in order to find new ways to please Him and bring Him praise. Whatever we ask will be given to us if we walk closely with the Lord and remain consistently in His Word.
    One more thing. For years I applied this prescription to my own prayers request for divine healing. I have sought to remain in the Lord and have His words remain in me.
    1John 5: 14-15 says, "If we ask anything according to his will, he bear us. And if we know that he hears us whatever we ask we know that we have what we asked of him."
Lord, I'm asking only that Your will be done in my life. I have the assurance that You will always say "yes" to that prayer!
   

"FOUND IN HIM"

"And be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.
Philippians 3:9

The song says. .
Up from the ashes, your love has brought us
Out of the darkness into the light
Lifting our sorrows, bearing our burdens, healing our hearts
Not having our own work or our own plans, but resting in the omnipotent of God.
He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. (John 15:5).
To abide in Christ, to be "found in Him," what an incredible reality! This is our goal, our purpose, and God's ultimate purpose for us. Abiding in Him is the other side of being possessed by Spirit of God, the fruit of brokenness, say I'm moving forward, and the beauty of the Christ life. When He truly reign s as King in us in all things, then we we will always be "found in Him"
     Paul talked about being "found in Him" in Philippians 3:9 and he went on to say in verse 12, "Not I have already attained...but I press on." Scripture tells us that we are already in Christ, but Paul was going a step further by talking about the full appropriation if this reality in his life. He "pressed on" with all his heart,  and so must we,
     When we live fully in His plan and not our plans, His ideas and not our ideas, His thoughts and not our thoughts (Isaiah55:8-9). His work and not our own, then our lives are hidden in Christ because we have reached the point of brokenness. You must find this place if you really know that He Is there.
     Every day must be a step toward living in this place, being to take over, where your thoughts cease and He fills you with his thoughts. Your devotional time is not just an opportunity to give God your list of request, but rather a time of change and transformation, a time of surrender and becoming one with God. Each day, set yourself a specific time of total surrender, of seeking God to take over your thoughts, plans, dreams, vision, feeings in short, everything.
     This is yielding; this is possession. You must know, thought, that God will not take over your will and force you into this place. You never lose your will. Possession us when your will is daily given to Him so that you may enter his rest, "the secret place" and be found in Him."

A Mysterious Work

"Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit."
JOHN 3:8 NLT

Read John 3:6-16

In an earlier study, we saw that Jesus told Nicodemus, a Pharisees member of the Jewish council, that a person must be born again in order to enter the kingdom of God. Predictably, Nicodemus was stunned and bewildered by Jesus' declaration. "'How can a man be  born when he is old?"' he asked, then followed up with a crass question as to whether Jesus meant that a man must re-enter his mother's womb and emerge again. Here is bone of the moist learned men in Israel standing puzzled by theological concept expressed by Jesus. But his reaction is not unique. Many believers down through the centuries have struggled to understand the process of regeneration. They have fine so because regeneration is extremely mysterious. In fact, atitd root, it is impenetrable.
     Jesus acknowledges as much in His conversation with Nicodemus. "'The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it."' He says, "'but [you] cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So everyone in regeneration is something like the wind. We can hear the wind howling, we can feel the breeze against our cheek, and we can even see the devastating when the wind blows terrible. Force. But these are secondary things we cannot see the wind itself. Even so,bwe cannot detect the Holy Spirit as He comes to regenerate our hearts, for He leaves no footprints. We cannot even pinpoint the moment of our spiritual resurrection. Nevertheless, regeneration is a spiritual reality that takes place internally and transforms a person to meet the requirement for seeing the kingdom of God.
    Because of this mysterious nature of regeneration, many professing Christian struggle to find assurance that regeneration has truly occurred bin their lives. It can be very difficult to find certain about the states of our own souls, let alone those of others. But the regeneration wrought by the Spirit shows itself I changes to the nature of the person who is born again. At rebirth, the internal disposition of our souls is renewed, so that we come to have an affection for God we did not have before. Thus affection is far from perfect, but it is there  and bit is real. Our hearts begin beating for God and we begin to manifest the fruit of a changed of life.
     Do you struggle with assurance that you have been truly born  again? Scripture makes clear that God wishes His children to have such assurance. Study the verses below and apply them to yourself. Do you see evidence of supernatural change in your life? If so, rejoice. And rest assured that you will indeed see the kingdom of God.

"Produce much Faith "

"But if you stay joined to me and my words remain in you, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted! My true disciples produce much fruit. This brings great glory to my Father."
JOHN 15: 7-8 NLT

"If ye abide in me. . . . " If we are born again, we do abide in Christ. If Jesus had said that and that alone, we would have had it made, but Jesus said,. . . AND my words abide in you. . . " Jesus' words abide in us in the measure that we act upon them
   If Jesus' words abide in us, we are bound to have faith, because the Bible says, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing the by the word of God" (Roman. 10:17). It would be impossible for Jesus words to abide in someone and that person not have faith!
   Unbelief, or doubt, is a result of ignorance of the Word of God. If we love the Word, then when we come to pray, that Word dwells in us so richly that it becomes Jesus' Word on our lips. It will be as the Father's words were on the lips of Jesus.