Power of Christ in me

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." 2 Corinthians 12:9

Morning by Morning

LAMENTATIONS 3

21 But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him

26 It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.

I Surrender

I Surrender
by Leslie Ludy

Lord, I know You see this fear in my heart
Of what my future holds
I feel You softly ask if I can trust You more
And give You control
So I kneel before You now
And I offer everything
Come and be the Lord of all
All I am or ever hope to be

I surrender, I surrender
To the One who loves me more than life
I surrender, I surrender
Here is my heart
I open it wide
To the One who cannot be unfaithful
I now offer You all that I am
I surrender, I surrender
From this day on
I'll be in Your hands

I've been living for myself
And now I want to live for You alone
Come and help me when I'm weak
And when my path seems so unknown
You will be beside me still
I know You want whats best for me
So when I want to take control
Lord, please come and help my unbelief

It's not for me. It's all for You.

"Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness!" Psalm 115:1

I hope when you read this, that you can follow my thinking as I've typed it out. It's all really good stuff that the Lord has been revealing to me and reminding me, and I felt led to share it on my blog. It's pretty long but I believe worth reading. :-)

Think about these two questions:
What is the meaning of life?
How can I have a meaningful life?

These could seem like difficult questions to answer, but really it's quite simple. At least my explanation of it is going to be simple. I suppose one could make it more in depth than I am going to. Others could really answer these questions completely wrong and go way off track and certainly make it difficult in their own mind. But I do believe that God is clear in His Word as to how we can give ourselves and others the answers to these two questions.
We're going to approach it from the assumption that the person asking these questions is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let me start by saying that I have been asking myself these questions lately. I've been thinking about my own life and how it would be different than it is if I had it the way that I think would be perfect. Like...I would, for instance, certainly be married and have a few kids by now, etc...(for example). So then I thought about how I have prayed for these things, but God's plans for me have obviously been different than what I expected. And yet, looking back I can see all that God has done in my life during these years that I would've liked to have been married, and I am VERY thankful to have had these years to grow in the Lord as I have and may not otherwise had I been married. So God has allowed me to see how, to this point, He has worked everything out for my good according to His purpose. He has shown me specifically how He has been faithful to that promise in my life even with things not going according to MY plans.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD." Isaiah 55:8

So...in saying that, I have realized that we can't exactly make our own plans and go for it and get what we want just because we want it. So in that sense, to have a meaningful life isn't something that we can plan out for ourselves what we think would make us most happy and then be ambitious and go for it.
We can pray for these things(and we SHOULD), but what is our desire behind the prayer for those things in our life(whatever they may be)? With my personal example for instance...WHY do I want to be married? WHY do I want kids? Because I think that's what is going to make me happy? If that's the case, then my motives behind praying for them are totally wrong. If I think that they are what will bring ultimate meaning to my life, then I am wrong to even ask for them from God.

Where am I going with this?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that WE are not what brings meaning to our lives. And THINGS are not what give us meaning. Other PEOPLE aren't our meaning. It's not even about us at all. It's all about Him. EVERYTHING is about Him including our salvation. We are here to glorify Him. That's it. That is the meaning of our lives and that is our purpose on earth.
Simple, huh?
We figure out what brings glory to God and we live our lives accordingly. We can start by being in the Word, in prayer, and spending time with the body of Christ. Also, as a lot of you have heard this most quoted statement made by John Piper: "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." So we glorify Him the most when we are content in Him, finding all of our fulfillment in Him, and making every move in our life in order to please Him because we love Him.

For me, I have begun to understand this more even when it comes to petitioning the Lord for something that I desire in this life. Am I asking for whatever I am asking for because I want to have my desire fulfilled for my own benefit? OR am I asking the Lord to fulfill this request so He can be more glorified in my life by granting that request? And WOULD He be more glorified if I were to receive it? And another very important question, will I still glorify and bless His name should He so choose to NOT give me what I've asked for?

This can really pertain to anything in our lives. Any decision we make- including the seemingly simple/mundane things in life. We've got to ask ourselves, "Am I asking for or doing this for the glory of God?" "Will I glorify God if I choose to go that route?" "Will God be glorified through me if I speak to this person about that thing that I feel I should say to them?" etc...

Today the Lord led me to this passage in Psalms and again reminded me that it's not about us. It's about Him.

"Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness!" Psalm 115:1
The Psalmist goes on to talk about how our God is in the heavens and He does as He pleases. He is exalted over other gods. We are reminded to trust in the Lord and fear Him for He is our help and our shield. Then the Psalmist states how He will bless us- those who fear the Lord.
So...for His glory, He does as He pleases. For His glory, He blesses us. For His glory, He saves us. Yes, for His glory Christ Jesus died on the cross. All for His glory, He created us to glorify Him and love Him.

The meaning of life is to glorify God.
To have a meaningful life, we do our best to glorify Him in all that we do.
So we must ask ourselves, "Am I giving God the glory?"

"So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." 1 Corinthians 10:31

We glorify God by being happy in Him.
God is all that we need. In Him is complete fullness and joy. ("You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 16:11)
This is why Jesus Christ died, to bring us to God.(1 Peter 3:18)
So His love for us is revealed in that He would give His own Son to bring us to Himself because He is what we need more than anything else.

Oh Father, help me to live a life that will make much of You and much of Your Son. I am nothing without You.

"Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to Your name give glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness!" Psalm 115:1

Praying For My Death Sentence?

Last night I listened to another Paul Washer sermon, "Pray And Be Alone With God." Washer made a statement that really made me think hard. Here it is:

The most dangerous prayer you could pray:
Praying to be like Jesus Christ is practically calling a death sentence upon yourself.

What did He mean by that? At first I was a little bothered because isn't that what we're supposed to pray? And isn't that what sanctification is all about? And isn't it what I've been praying?
Then as I thought about that last part, how it is what I have been praying, I really began to understand what Paul Washer meant by death sentence.

I think when we pray that God will make us more like His Son, sometimes we forget what this entails. We are praying for and expecting the outcome of being like Christ yet not necessarily for the means of what it will cost us to become like Him.

Calling a death sentence upon yourself...

"...If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." Luke 9:23

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." Galatians 2:20

God did not spare His Son suffering and death. He surely will not spare us whatever it takes to make us more like His Son. If we really truly genuinely want to be more like Christ, and that is our prayer, we can't be expecting a life of comfort and ease.
We must die. Die to self. Death is the way to life.

"For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His." Romans 6:5

"For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it." Mark 8:35

And let's not forget this verse...

"That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death." Philippians 3:10

The True Gospel- Paul Washer

Notes taken from a Paul Washer sermon that I was listening to earlier this evening...

There was so much more to it, but this part really stood out to me and I had to post it on my blog. If for no other reason, to remind me of what I heard because it is so directly related to my own testimony and I have to continue to remember it.

When I think of when the Lord first revealed to me how much He has forgiven me, I am brought once again to my knees. We have to be constantly daily reminded of the Gospel and what Christ did for us. It keeps us forever grateful to Him and more passionate about sharing Him with others because of what He has done for us. I know I don't deserve what He has done for me. My sin is great. But His death on the cross was more than great enough to pay the price for my sins to save me from the penalty of being separated from God forever.


Until you understand the depths of the sin of man, you cannot understand the glory of God in the Gospel.

Example: where did all the stars go this afternoon? You couldn't see them because there was so much light. You couldn't see their glory. You couldn't find them. But when the pitch black darkness of the sky appeared, the stars came out in the fullness of their glory. In the same way, we cannot understand the glory of the Gospel of Jesus Christ until it is set against the pitch blackness of our own sin.

loves much because forgiven much(Luke 7:47)

We don't love Christ as much as we should because we do not realize how much we've been forgiven.
And we don't realize how much we've been forgiven b/c we don't see the full darkness of man.
sinful depravity...the more we see it, the more we see the glory of Christ.

We look at our sin so that it might lead us to Him.

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
Genesis 6:5

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23

All Things Crucified

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me." Galatians 2:20

Taken from Milton Vincent's "A Gospel Primer":

The Gospel is not simply the story of "Christ, and Him crucified"(1 Cor. 2:2); it is also the story of my own crucifixion. For the Bible tells me that I, too, was crucified on Christ's cross. My old self was slain there, and my love affair with the world was crucified there too. The cross is also the place where I crucify my flesh and all it's sinful desires. Truly, Christ's death and my death are so intertwined as to be inseparable.

God is committed to my dying every day, and He calls me to that same commitment. He insists that every hour be my dying hour, and He wants my death on the cross to be as central to my own life story as is Christ's death to the Gospel story. "Let this attitude be in you," He says, "which was also in Christ Jesus...who became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

Crucifixion hurts. In fact, its heart-wrenching brutality can numb the senses. It is a gasping and bloody affair, and there is nothing nice, pretty, or easy about it. It is not merely death, but excruciating death.

Nevertheless, I must set my face like a flint toward the cross and embrace this crucifixion in everything I do. I should expect every day to encounter circumstantial evidence of God's commitment to my dying' and I must seize upon every God-given opportunity to be conformed more fully to Christ's death, no matter the pain involved.

When my flesh yearns for some prohibited thing, I must die. When called to do something I don't want to do, I must die. When I wish to be selfish and serve no one, I must die. When shattered by hardships that I despise, I must die. When wanting to cling to wrongs done against me, I must die. When enticed by allurements of the world, I must die. When wishing to keep besetting sins secret, I must die. When wants that are borderline needs are left unmet, I must die. When dreams that are good seem shoved aside, I must die.

"Not my will, but Yours be done," Christ trustingly prayed on the eve of His crucifixion; and preaching His story to myself each day puts me in a frame of mind to trust God and embrace the cross of my own dying also.

Thankfully the Gospel teaches me that dying is not an end, but a beginning also. For after Christ too up His cross and died, God raised Him from the dead, exalted Him to the highest heaven, and drew Him into His bosom. These facts surrounding Christ's resurrection stand as proof positive that God will not leave me for dead, but will raise me similarly, if I would only allow myself to die. Indeed, on the other side of each layer of dying lie experiences of a life with God that are far richer, far higher, and far more intimate than anything I would have otherwise known.

In God's economy, death is the way to life. "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it," Jesus says, "but whoever loses his life for My sake, he shall find it." Indeed the more conformable I am made to the death of Christ, the more I experience freedom from sin and taste the power of the resurrection of Jesus Himself. The path to such power is achieved with each incident of dying to myself and reckoning myself dead to sin.

The more I contemplate the Gospel, the more I understand that this "word of the cross" stands as a blueprint for my own life story. The death that Christ died is the death to which I also am called, and the death to which I am called is my entry point to union with Christ and life at its fullest. So, come what may, I'll let no one take this death from me!