BE Transformed: by Jerry Bridges

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2 

The verb be transformed in Romans 12:2 is in the passive voice, it is in the imperative mood; THAT IS, IT IS A COMMAND TO DO SOMETHING. This indicates that we as believers are not passive in this transforming process. We are not like blocks of marble being transformed into a beautiful sculpture by a master sculptor. God has given us a mind and heart with which to respond to and cooperate with the Spirit as He does His work in us. That thought leads naturally to the Scripture passage that is considered to be the classic statement of the working together of the believer with the Holy Spirit who is at work within him. The passage is Philippians 2:12–13:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

In Philippians 2:12 Paul urged the Philippian believers to apply themselves diligently to working out their salvation. He urged them to display the evidences of salvation in their daily lives through their obedience to God’s commands and through putting on the godly character traits that Paul elsewhere called the fruit of the Spirit. And, according to William Hendriksen, the tense of the verb continue to work out indicates “continuous, sustained, strenuous effort.” Here again we see that sanctification is a process, and a process in which we, as believers, are very actively involved.

But Paul’s strong exhortation to the Philippians is based on the confidence that God’s Spirit is working in them. He is working in them to enlighten their understanding of His will, to stimulate in their emotions a desire to do His will, and to turn their wills so they actually obey. Most of all, He gives them the enabling power so that they are able to do His will.

So progressive sanctification very much involves our activity. But it is an activity that must be carried out in dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is not a partnership with the Spirit in the sense that we each—the believer and the Holy Spirit—do our respective tasks. Rather, we work as He enables us to work. His work lies behind all our work and makes our work possible. The Holy Spirit can and does work within us apart from any conscious response on our part. We have seen this in the initial act of sanctification when He creates within us a new heart and gives us an entirely new disposition toward God and His will. He is not dependent on us to do His work. But we are dependent on Him to do our work; we cannot do anything apart from Him.

The ONE We Truly Seek: from Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

Revelation 1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
I Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

I am the culmination of all your hopes and desires. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last: who is and was and is to come. Before you knew Me, you expressed your longing for Me in hurtful ways. You were ever so vulnerable to the evil around you in the world. But now My Presence safely shields you, enfolding you in My loving arms. I have lifted you out of darkness into My marvelous light.
     Though I have brought many pleasures into your life, not one of them is essential. Receive My blessings with open hands. Enjoy My good gifts, but do not cling to them. Turn your attention to the Giver of all good things, and rest in the knowledge that you are complete in Me. The one thing you absolutely need is the one things you can never lose. My Presence with you.

Psalm 62:5-8 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. Selah

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

The Disciple’s Master: by Oswald Chambers

“You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am John 13:13

To have a master and to be mastered aren’t the same thing. To have Jesus as a master means that there is someone who knows me better than I know myself, someone who is closer than a friend, who is able to satisfy the deepest longing of my heart. It’s to belong to someone who gives me the secure sense that he has met and solved every perplexity and problem of my mind. To have Jesus as my master is all this and nothing less.

To be mastered is different; it implies coercion or force. Jesus Christ never enforces obedience. At certain times, I wish he would, but he doesn’t. At other times, I wish he’d leave me alone, but he won’t.

“You call me Master and Lord.” We call Jesus our Lord and Master, but is he? “Master” and “Lord” have little place in today’s vocabulary. We prefer “Savior,” “Teacher,” and “Healer.” The only word to describe the experience of having Jesus as master is love, and many of us know very little about love as God reveals it. This is proved by the way we use the word obey. We use it to mean the submission of a weaker person to a more powerful person. In the Bible, obedience is based on a relationship of equals: the relationship of the Father and the Son. Our Lord wasn’t God’s servant; he was God’s Son. Jesus obeyed his Father because he loved him.

Our relationship to Jesus is to be the same as his relationship to the Father. If instead we think we are being mastered, it is proof that we have no master. To take this attitude toward Jesus is to be far from the relationship he wants. He wants us in a relationship in which he is easily and effortlessly Master, so much so that we aren’t even conscious of it. All we know is that we love him, and that we are his to rule.

The Stark Contrast: by Jerry Bridges

“The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Probably no other passage suggests more starkly the contrast between living by grace and living by works than Romans 7:6: "But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code."

The new way of the Spirit is not a less rigorous ethic than the old way of the written code. The difference doesn’t lie in the content of God’s moral will. Since that’s a reflection of the holy character of God, it cannot change. Rather, the difference lies in the reason for obeying and the ability to obey.

Are you seeking to build and maintain your relationship with God on the basis of "keeping the law"—on the basis of your personal performance—or on the basis of the merit of Jesus Christ? Do you view God’s moral precepts as a source of bondage and condemnation for failure to obey them, or do you sense the Spirit producing within you an inclination and desire to obey out of gratitude and love? Do you try to obey by your own sheer will and determination, or do you rely on the Spirit daily for his power to enable your obedience?

Do you feel God has set before you an impossible code of conduct you cannot keep, or do you view him as your divine heavenly Father who has accepted you and loves you on the basis of the merit of Christ? For acceptance with God, are you willing to rely solely on the finished perfect work of Jesus instead of your own pitifully imperfect performance?

Prayer Generates Love: by EM Bounds

1 Peter 1:23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.

Prayer invariably generates a love for the Word of God. Prayer leads people to obey the Word of God, and puts an unspeakable joy into the obedient heart.

Praying people and Bible-reading people are the same kind of people. The God of the Bible and the God of prayer are one. God speaks to man in the Bible; man speaks to God in prayer. One reads the Bible to discover God’s will, and prays in order to receive power to do that will.

Bible reading, and prayer are the distinguishing traits of those who strive to know, and please God.

and the answer is… JESUS: by TA Sparks

The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. Dear children, this is the last hour. 1 John 2:17,18

Over wide stretches of the earth the people of God are being driven, scattered, having everything outward taken. The question is: Why does the Lord allow it? Why is it so, if the Lord is wise, and almighty, and gracious? It is to discover how much the Heavenly Christ is to His people, and how much they depend upon the earthly order of things, even the Christian order.

“That which was from the beginning.... Little children, it is the last hour... the one who does the will of God lives for ever”. Do you see the link? If at the end, at the last hour, it is as it was from the beginning, then it will abide for ever, but if it has become something else, it will go. This whole question of heavenly relationship with the Lord is a tremendously searching one, the fact that Christ has transferred everything to heaven and that nothing less than a life in heavenly union with Him will stand the test at any time. We will ask the Lord that He will take this – if it really is the truth – and search us. It may be that some of us will find comfort, because we shall see this is exactly what the Lord is doing with us. Why isolation? Why the testings? Why the loneliness in spiritual life? To save us from things unto Himself, even Christian things, so that God’s end that Christ may be all and in all shall be reached; not things, but Christ; not Christianity, but Christ; not Christian work, but Christ.

The Indwelling Christ: by Andrew Murray

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love…that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:14, 16-17, 19

The great privilege that separated Israel from other nations was this: they had God dwelling in their midst; His home was in “the Holiest of All” (Hebrews 9:3).

The New Testament is the dispensation of the indwelling God in the hearts of His people. Christ said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him” (John 14:23). This is what Paul referred to as “the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). How few experience this! Let us study Paul’s teaching on the way to experience this crowning blessing of the Christian life.

       1. “I bow my knees to the Father.” The blessing must come from the Father. It is to be found in much prayer.

       2. “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory”—­something very special and divine—“to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.” God gives us the strength to be separate from sin and the world, to yield to Christ as Lord and Master, and to live the life of love for Christ and keeping His commandments to which the promise has been given: “We will come unto Him, and make Our abode with Him” (John 14:23).

       3. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Christ longs for hearts to dwell in. As a believer sees this by faith, bows his knee, and asks God for this great blessing, he receives grace to believe that the prayer is answered. And through that faith, he accepts the wonderful gift—Christ dwelling in the heart by faith.

       4. “That you, being rooted and grounded in love…may be filled with all the fullness of God,” as far as it is possible for man to experience it.

Feed on the words the Holy Spirit has given here, and hold fast to the assurance that God will do “abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20).