Consecrating our lives

I shared in my last post that I feel such a freshness as I’m reading through God’s word, and today was such a tremendous blessing.  At each stage of my life, God uses His word, no matter how many times I’ve read it to restore to me the joy of His salvation. I am grateful He saved me.

I want to share my thoughts, just what’s been rolling around my head and heart about Joshua 3:5, which says, “Then said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”

 

I keep wondering, personally, and with fellow believers do we take the call of God to consecrate ourselves as holy to Him seriously?

 

Let’s be honest…we can ‘justify’ anything as spiritual… “not gossip…just prayer requests…” and the list goes on and on. But how seriously am I, are we, taking the call of God to be holy even as He is holy…as in 1 Peter 1:16.

 

In Joshua, tomorrow in the original language can mean literally tomorrow…or can also mean a time to come in the future. Dear sisters, we are to be ready for God to do wonders among us. You may think I’m ‘preaching’ a healthy wealthy false gospel, let me assure you I am not. You may yourself have been saved now for many years, and grown away from the proper awe that ‘status’ should hold…let me encourage you, return to the simplicity of praising the Lord for salvation. Meditate on what it means to be saved…it will change your heart! What I am saying is that we must be prepared for God to do wonders among us…wonders like…saving that neighbor you’ve been witnessing to for ten years, or the loved on you’ve been fervently asking God to save for sixteen years…or a physical healing. Whatever it may be dear friend, when God acts…it is wonderous. He IS a wonderous God! He IS worthy of consecrating ourselves for His glory.

 

Dear one, consecrate means: to prepare, dedicate, be separate. I want to challenge you, as the Lord is challenging me….are you preparing yourself for Him each day? Are you asking Him to live out His purposes through you by the power of His Holy Spirit?

 

Let me share this with you, I have an amazing friend. A sweet sister in Christ, who wanted a child for years, and I saw her cry out to God as Hannah did. Do you know…I don’t believe I ever saw her doubt our Lord? In the four years she asked Him…she kept asking Him, she kept believing that one day the Lord would bless her. Can I confess…I doubted? I prayed fervently…and yet struggled with doubt. Dear sisters, our God has done wonders among us…she is with child and will be holding that sweet baby very soon! She prepared herself…she prayed, she waited for God to do wonderous things! She wasn’t complacent, she worked…she pursued different avenues. She did not merely sit around and expect that God would do everything and her do nothing…although there are times when God does things all on His own without us doing a thing.   Because that’s who God is, He alone is all powerful and can do anything all by Himself.  He has no need of us, but our need for Him has no limit.  I saw her faithfully “work.”  I want to faithfully “work.”

 

God wants us to be active followers. That means, consecrating ourselves. Preparing our hearts to be ready for His use. That doesn’t mean filling our minds with the newest releases at the cinemas or the Best Sellers at the bookstores….are they all bad? No. Certainly not, and we should be an educated people. However:

 

“For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.” 1 Cor. 1:21

and

“For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God.” 1 Cor. 3:19

 

So we must be on guard as to what we are allowing in our minds, hearts and homes. That’s our duty as a believer. We must keep our guard up so that we can be ready for Him.

 

I encourage you dear sister, look around….observe your own habits….the programs you watch on television, the books you read….are they filled with immorality whether blatant or subtle. Are the books, movies and tv shows filled with witches and wizards and other spiritual mediums that the Lord cautions us against? You may be spiritually mature enough to know it is wrong, but when you continually allow that into your mind, you become desensitized to it. Then it becomes a norm, and then you’ve gone so far astray that you wonder what happened?

 

I assure you dear sister, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8. I have, by the immeasurable grace of God been reminded and humbled by this verse, many a time and brought back to Him with a broken and contrite spirit….because of His goodness!!

 

I challenge you….and the Lord is challenging me, let’s commit to looking at what a life consecrated to God looks like. Let’s do it! Let’s radically trust the Lord to keep us abiding in Him by His steadfast love, that we may be lights of His glory throughout our community!!

 

 

wait…I wasn’t finished..

Have you ever said, “Wait…I wasn’t finished!”  when conversing with someone…or have you ever heard someone say it to you?

I hate to admit it, because I try not to interrupt people, but I am guilty of both…saying it and hearing it.

As I’ve been reading and studying through God’s word on a new bible plan this year, I feel like He is showing me new connections each day.  The old and the new testaments are so intricately woven together it always humbles my heart to read His word and see the depth of God’s love for us, His children.  I marvel at God’s omniscience!!

Lately I feel like the full context of God’s word has been refining my heart in ways I never would have imagined as a babe in Christ.  I feel His Spirit beckoning my heart, “I’m wasn’t finished…”  as I read His word.  I can’t stop at one verse, one chapter, one book.  I feel the sweet whisper of my Lord, “Read on…dear one…read on….soak it in, this is my word…living and active.”

It’s as if I am reading His word for the first time.  Oh how alive His word is!!

I have been so incredibly convicted and blessed by Galatians,  the whole book!

I have been soaking in the words of chapter three for a few weeks now.  I can’t seem to move on.

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”  Galatians 3:1-4

How quickly, dear friend, do we get caught up in the flesh?  Being “perfected by the flesh?”  I read and reread Luther’s commentary on Galatians and just wept!  Mainly because how easily is it in our culture (as Americans) to be the foolish Galatians that Paul addresses?  We have hierarchies of sin within the body, we pass judgment, we follow legalism, we certainly worship ourselves far above our neighbors in our society, and let’s be honest…that’s just within the church.  I tell you dear friend…I am the worst sinner of all.  I say these words without one ounce of ill will or judgment toward any.  I say them to confess….the LORD alone is good!!  The Lord alone saves..the Spirit Himself…it is the work of the Holy Spirit in us by the grace of God that leads us.

“You were running well.  Who hindered you from obeying the truth?”  Galatians  5:7

I once heard from someone who I looked up to spiritually, “That’s good preaching but that’s not good living.”  My heart literally HURT.   Dear ones, God clearly shows us…good preaching…is good living.  What I mean by that is we are to live out what He teaches us in His word!  Will we do it perfectly?  NO!  But I am convinced that the more we refuse to be hindered in obeying the truth of God’s word by refusing to listen to the lies of this world, and rather run to Jesus, we will live out a life for His glory!!  We will run well!  We will continue to be sanctified by Him!

I simply want to encourage you dear sister, get into God’s word and soak in the beauty of His glory.  Be on your face and ask Him to give you a hunger and thirst for His word as you never have before, and then prioritize your time.  You do have the time to be in God’s word, you may just have to give something else up…and I can’t think of anything on this earth that is better than a sweet time of studying and meditating on the Word of God!!   I believe you will find that God’s word is altogether captivating and just because you’ve read a verse or a chapter or a book before, dear one, God is infinite and He isn’t finished with you (or I) yet, He is using His living and active word to refine us for His glory!!