Thank God for Problems: from Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

Romans 8:28 We are assured and know that [God being a partner in their labor] all things work together and are [fitting into a plan] for good to and for those who love God and are called according to [His] design and purpose.

    Make friends with the problems in your life. Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust Me. Every problem can teach you something, transforming you little by little into the masterpiece I created you to be. The very same problem can become a stumbling block over which you fall, if you react with distrust and defiance. The choice is up to you, and you will have to choose many times each day whether to trust Me or defy Me.

    The best way to befriend your problems is to thank Me for them. This simple act opens your mind to the possibility of benefits flowing from your difficulties. You can even give persistent problems nicknames, helping you to approach them with familiarity rather than with dread. The next step is to introduce them to Me, enabling Me to embrace them in My loving Presence. I will not necessarily remove your problems, but My wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them.

1 Corinthians 1:23-24 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

You Will Find Christ Everywhere in the Bible: by AW Tozer

…To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things…. 1 Corinthians 8:6

I do not mind telling you that I have always found Jesus Christ beckoning to me throughout the Scriptures. I am convinced that it was God’s design that we should find the divine Creator, Redeemer and Lord whenever we search the Scriptures.

The Son of God is described by almost every fair and worthy name in the creation. He is called the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings. He is called the Star that shone on Jacob. He is described as coming forth with His bride, clear as the moon. His Presence is likened unto the rain coming down upon the earth, bringing beauty and fruitfulness. He is pictured as the great sea and as the towering rock. He is likened to the strong cedars. A figure is used of Him as of a great eagle, going literally over the earth.

Where the person of Jesus Christ does not stand out tall and beautiful and commanding, as a pine tree against the sky, you will find Him behind the lattice, but stretching forth His hand. If He does not appear as the sun shining in his strength, He may be discerned in the reviving by the promised gentle rains.

Our Lord Jesus Christ was that One divinely commissioned to set forth the mystery and the majesty and the wonder and the glory of the Godhead throughout the universe. It is more than an accident that both the Old and New Testaments comb heaven and earth for figures of speech or simile to set forth the wonder and glory of God!

My Own Personality: by CS Lewis

Matthew 16:23-25 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^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of 'little Christs', all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to 'be myself' without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call 'Myself' becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call 'My wishes' become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite to me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call 'me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

THE NATURE OF SELF: by Martyn Lloyd Jones

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Matthew 18:9

The modern cult of self-expression fails to realize the true nature of self. It talks much about giving expression to self, and yet we can show very easily that its very ideas concerning that self are false and do violence to man’s true nature. Obviously, before expression must come definition; and our objection is not so much to the idea of self-expression per se as to the utterly false view of that self that is taken by so many today. The gospel answer to this modern cult is not a doctrine of repression, but rather a call to the realization of the true nature of the self. The clash between the biblical view and that of moderns comes out very clearly in the quoted lines above, especially in the emphasis that Christ places on the word thee. “If thine eye offend thee . . . cast it from thee ... it is better for thee . . .”

The modern view does not differentiate between the self and the various factors that tend to influence the self, the various factors that the self uses in order to express itself. They claim that man in himself is but the result of these and their effects. Our Lord, on the other hand, draws that distinction very clearly and definitely in His emphasis on the word thee. That He does so is perhaps the real cause of all the modern confusion.

According to Christ, man is not a machine, nor is he an animal led and governed by whim. He is bigger than the body, bigger than tradition, history, and all else. For there is within man another element called the soul.

Off Putting & On Putting: by TA Sparks

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Colossians 3:9,10

Christ Himself, when He was here, never failed to let people know that when they entered that door, or that straight and narrow way, they were in for trouble. Now that may sound like a very terrible thing to say, especially to you young Christians who are not far inside the door, but be perfectly clear about it; the Lord Jesus never deceived anybody about this, never at all. He let people know that to “follow Him,” as He put it at that time, involved them in difficulty and suffering and persecution and trial and a lifelong thing. There is a cost here, a great cost. And we shall discover that while there are the compensations, for there are undoubtedly the compensations in this life and the mighty compensations for eternity, this is a way which is not easy for the natural man by any means. This work of the Holy Spirit is drastic, exacting, and very trying to the flesh. Make no mistake about it; it will take all the energy that the Holy Spirit Himself has to accomplish this work. It really will. So the Lord Jesus has not left us in any doubt about this.

But note, and I am glad the Apostle Paul puts it like this, because it is so true to experience, “The new man who is being renewed.” Notice, first there was a precise and definite transaction, “You put off” and “you put on,” but now the work that is going on is not a single act of a single moment and a single day, but it is something that is going on in us.

God’s Revelation Is His Invitation: by Henry Blackaby

Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.       Amos 3:7

Christians spend much time talking about “seeking God’s will,” as though it were hidden and difficult to find. God does not hide His will. His will is not difficult to discover. We do not have to plead with God to reveal His will to us. He is more eager to reveal His will than we are willing to receive it. We sometimes ask God to do things He has already done!

The people in Amos’s day became disoriented to God and to His desires. God had revealed His will; the problem was that they had not recognized it or obeyed it. Amos declared that God does nothing in the affairs of humanity without seeking one of His servants to whom He will reveal His activity. Tragically, there are times when no one is walking closely enough with Him to be receptive to His word (Isa. 59:16; 63:5; Ezek. 22:30-31).

Jesus walked so intimately with His Father that He was always aware of what the Father was doing around Him (John 5:19-20). Jesus said that if our eyes are pure, they will see God and recognize His activity (Matt. 6:22). If we are not seeing God’s activity, the problem is not a lack of revelation. The problem is that our sin prevents us from noticing it.

When God is working in your child’s life or when He is convicting your coworker, He may reveal His activity to you. His revelation is His invitation for you to join Him in His redemptive work. Be alert to God’s activity around you. He will reveal His activity to His servants. If your spiritual eyes are pure, you will be overwhelmed by all that you see God doing around you!

Vision: By Oswald Chambers

I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. — Acts 26:19

When Jesus Christ appeared to Paul and told him to preach the gospel, there was nothing hesitant about Paul’s response: he obeyed, keeping the vision from heaven bright before him as he began fulfilling his commission (Acts 26:12–19). If we lose the vision, we alone are responsible; it means that we’ve been lax and careless in our spiritual lives. The only way to be obedient to the vision God sends is to give our utmost for his highest, and this can only be done by continually and resolutely recalling the vision, while working steadily to realize it. The test is to keep the vision in our sights not only during times of prayer and devotion but sixty seconds of every minute, sixty minutes of every hour.

“Though it linger, wait for it” (Habakkuk 2:3). We cannot rush the fulfillment of a vision; we have to live in its light until it accomplishes itself through us. Sometimes, after we receive a vision, we grow impatient. We go racing off into practical work, hoping to speed things along. Then the work becomes our focus, and we lose sight of the vision. We don’t even notice when it has been fulfilled! Working to realize the vision is necessary, but we must work steadily, without rush or force, and only when and where God chooses. Our ability to wait for the vision that lingers is a test of our loyalty to him.

After God gives a vision to his disciple, he always sends a whirlwind, flinging his disciple to the place where the seed of the vision will take root and grow. Are you ready to be sown, so that the vision can fulfill itself through you? The answer depends on whether or not you’re living in the light of what you’ve seen. Let God fling you out, and don’t go until he does. If you try to dictate where you’ll go, you’ll prove empty. But if you let God sow you, you will bring forth fruit.