Your Real Self: by CS Lewis

Matthew 16:24-27 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

There must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also ours, and ours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

The Cross and Christ’s Love: by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Looking at our Lord on the cross, what I see above everything else is the love that made Him do it all. “Love so amazing, so divine.” What does it mean? Let the apostle himself answer the question. This is how he puts it: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commends his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:6-10).

It comes to this, my dear friends: He is dying there because of His love for you, His love for me, His love for those who are sinners, those who are rebels, those who are enemies. He died for people who hated Him. As He was dying there, Saul of Tarsus was hating Him, but He was dying for Saul of Tarsus. As Paul (to give his subsequent name) puts it later: “. . . the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). He did not wait until Paul was converted before He loved him. He loved him even when Saul of Tarsus was blaspheming His holy name, ridiculing His claim that He was the Son of God and the Lord of Glory, ridiculing the idea that He came to teach us and to die for us and to save us, pouring his blasphemous scorn upon Him. While Paul was doing that, Christ was dying for Paul. And He was doing the same for you and for me.

Find Rest for Your Mind: from Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

     Let Me control your mind. The mind is the most restless, unruly part of mankind. Long after you have learned the discipline of holding your tongue, your thoughts defy your will and set themselves up against Me. Man is the pinnacle of My creation, and the human mind is wondrously complex. I risked all by granting you freedom to think for yourself. This is god-like privilege, forever setting you apart from animals and robots. I made you in my image, precariously close to deity.
     Though My blood has fully redeemed you, your mind is the last bastion of rebellion. Open yourself to My radiant Presence, letting My Light permeate your thinking. When My Spirit is controlling your mind, you are filled with Life and Peace.

Romans 8:6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.

He Made Him to Be Sin: by Henry Blackaby

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.  2 Corinthians 5:21

This verse should startle us and cause us to tremble. It is not a verse to be read quickly and passed over. As Christians we are grateful to be forgiven of our sins. We are thankful we have been adopted as God’s children. Yet we will never comprehend the awesome price that Jesus paid to cleanse us of our sin and to give us His righteousness. How abhorrent was it for the sinless Son of God to have every sin of humanity placed upon Him? What love was required for the Father to watch His only Son bear the excruciating pain of our sin upon the cross?

The prophet Isaiah summarized the human condition: “We are all like an unclean thing,  And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6). Even the high priest, Joshua, in his exalted position among God’s people, was clothed in filthy rags before God (Zech. 3:3). The apostle Paul, who labored arduously to be righteous before God, realized that his most strenuous efforts to please God were no more valuable than rubbish (Phil. 3:4-10). The plight of humanity is that nothing we could ever do could satisfy God’s desire for righteousness. But the miracle of God’s mercy is that God exchanges our “filthy rags” for “rich robes” of righteousness (Zech. 3:4).

In this awesome exchange, God placed the sin of humanity upon His righteous Son. Jesus became so identified with our sin that Scripture says God made Him to be sin on our behalf. The holy Son of God could not possibly do more for us than this! Experiencing the Father’s wrath upon the sin He carried would have been more painful to endure than any human rejection or physical suffering.

Never take the righteousness God has given you for granted. Never take the forgiveness of your sin lightly. It cost God a terrible price in order to forgive you and make you righteous. Walk in a manner worthy of the righteousness He has given you.

Count the Cost: by CS Lewis

Luke 14:28-33 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’  Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Law in his terrible, cool, voice, said, .... "If you have not chosen the Kingdom of God, it will make in the end no difference what you have chosen instead." Those are hard words to take. Will it really make no difference whether it was women or patriotism, cocaine or art, whisky or a seat in the Cabinet, money or science? Well, surely no difference that matters. We shall have missed the end for which we are formed and rejected the only thing that satisfies. Does it matter to a man dying in a desert by which choice of route he missed the only well?

It is a remarkable fact that on this subject Heaven and Hell speak with one voice. The tempter tells me, "Take care. Think how much this good resolve, the acceptance of this Grace, is going to cost." But Our Lord equally tells us to count the cost. Even in human affairs great importance is attached to the agreement of those whose testimony hardly ever agrees. Here, more. Between them it would seem to be pretty clear that paddling [near the shore] is of little consequence. What matters, what Heaven desires and Hell fears, is precisely that further step, out of our depth, out of our own control.

The Constraint of the Call: by Oswald Chambers

Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! —1 Corinthians 9:16

Have you been called to preach the gospel as a disciple of Jesus Christ? If you have, beware of turning a deaf ear. The call to discipleship is a special kind of call. Everyone who is saved is called to testify to their salvation, but there is nothing easier than being saved. Salvation is God’s sovereign work; all we have to do is turn to him. “Turn to me and be saved” (Isaiah 45:22). Our Lord never says that the conditions of discipleship are the same as the conditions of salvation. We are condemned to salvation through the cross of Jesus Christ, but discipleship has an option with it: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

To become a disciple is to be made broken bread and poured-out wine in Jesus’s hands; it is to experience the pain of being constrained. In 1 Corinthians 9:16, Paul describes the distress that would seize him if he tried to break free. Having accepted the conditions of discipleship, he is now “set apart for the gospel,” entirely kept and bound for God (Romans 1:1).

To lead a set-apart life is to suffer agonies worthy of the name disciple. Every personal ambition is nipped in the bud; every personal desire is erased; every perspective apart from God’s is blotted out. Discipleship is not for everyone. But if you have felt God grip you for it, beware: woe to the soul who puts a foot in any other direction once the call has come.

The Cross Speaks To Us: by Martyn Lloyd-Jones

. . . the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel. Hebrews 12:24

Has the cross of Christ ever spoken to you? Have you heard its message? The cross of Christ preaches. The cross of Christ speaks. The blood of the cross speaks. It has something to say. Have you heard it? The writer to the Hebrews thanks God that this blood speaks something better than the blood of Abel spoke. You remember the story of Cain and Abel, the first two sons of Adam and Eve, and the story of how Cain slew his brother Abel and shed his blood.

He murdered him. And the blood of Abel, spilled there upon the ground, spoke as it cried out for vengeance, punishment, and retribution. The blood of Abel spoke. And God tells us through the writer to the Hebrews that is not the blood that you and I have come to. We have come to a blood of sprinkling that “speaks better things than that of Abel.” This is why all these men in the New Testament rejoice in it. This is why the saints of the ages rejoiced in it. The blood speaks, and it speaks the best things that the world has ever heard.

Let me call your attention to some of the things that the cross of Christ, the blood of the cross, speaks and says to men and women today. In other words, let us listen to the cross speaking in the form of exposition. There is nothing that so expounds the truth of God to us as the cross of Christ. The Bible expounds the same truth. The cross of Christ lays it open before us and makes it speak to us.

Have you ever regarded it as a sermon and sat and listened to it, and have you heard what it has to say to you? What an exposition of truth there is in that cross on Calvary’s hill!