First of all, I just want to thank you for letting me be among you these last few days. It has been a real privilege and a blessing. I have no idea how you guys would know me, but I felt right at home among you.
So I just wanted to thank you for the invitation and for allowing me to come and go to the Lord and find things that I need for my own life. So thank you.
This morning, I would like to read a couple of verses before we start. First Corinthians 1:9:
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
And then Psalm 32:8-9:
I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go:
I will counsel thee with Mine eye upon thee.
Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding;
Whose trappings must be bit and bridle to hold them in,
Else they will not come near unto thee.
Heavenly Father, we come to You this morning. We think about who we are, and at least thank You that You have not cast us away, but You have made us in Jesus, and You are out to recover us fully for Yourself.
O Lord, how we thank You. We stand before You because of what You have done for us. This morning, we would just stand in what You have done for us. Let us stand in the sacrifice of Jesus, thanking You and taking all that it means for us: that we are blameless in Your eyes before You as Your blood children.
But Father, we have a desire in our hearts. Our desire is that we will not be children anymore; we want to grow up. Father, You put this desire in us, and we thank You for it. But Lord, we look and say, “How do we grow up? Where are the keys?” These things seem so foreign to us, and we want to find it.
Father, I pray today that You will take Your Word and make it something other than just Christian verbiage—just words that we have heard before and say, “Oh yes, we know this”—and translate it into things that become life. O God, we are at Your mercy for this. We cannot do these things, and yet we have a hope that You have a desire for us and to do these things for us.
Give us Your Holy Spirit to help us, we pray, in Jesus Christ. Amen.
You can see I have another little title here, and I have my outline set up for us, so we are all ready to tackle the things at hand.
I told you when we first started that the first couple of things I wanted to share had to do with getting into the place where God wants us to be—the place being this land He had promised the children of Israel.
Now comes the part about saying, “How do we stay in there? How do we have the fruit that the Lord wants us to have?”
The book of Joshua is really kind of a culmination of the Pentateuch. Here we have God wanting a people, starting with Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob, getting through to Moses. He delivered the people out, and He would bring them into the place He wanted them to be.
But that is not the end. When you close the Pentateuch, you are right on the verge of where He wants you to be. Then you open Joshua, and Joshua is the beginning of a new day. The culmination of the old is coming into the new things, but it is the beginning for us because now it is for you to experience all that God has wanted and promised you.
So this morning, we want to look at these things. What is God after? We have been talking about consecration, and we can look at consecration and just make it a thing. We can say, “Well, I am just going to consecrate myself,” and it stands by itself—something you are trying to do.
But there is a purpose for these things. We want to find what God is really calling us to. What does He want from us? Why does He call us to consecrate ourselves to Him? What is He trying to do?
He is not trying to bring us there on our own, just set it up and say, “Okay, you consecrate now; you are on your own.” What is He after? First of all, He is out to give us an inheritance.
What is this inheritance? What is the end that He is trying to bring us to? What is the end for our setting ourselves apart unto Him? In Old Testament terms, it was the land.
Look at Joshua 15. Sometimes, when you read the Bible, you come to a passage and think, “I think I will skip that.” Trevor Bishop was talking to me the other day and said, “You have to read this stretch of Scripture for me.” It was Numbers 33:5-37—all the places that the Israelites traveled in the wilderness.
The thing was all those names. Have you ever gotten to those chapters where you just get names? First Chronicles, the first six chapters—you know, that is another one.
Joshua 15, the first few verses, is just like that. My Bible has a little title that says, “Boundaries of the Remaining Area of Judah.” From Joshua 15:1-12, it starts naming all these places.
You read all those places and start thinking, “That sounds big. That sounds really big.” My Bible has a little map there, and you look at it and say, “Well, it does not look that big.” But when you are reading it, you think, “God, that looks really big.”
Probably, if you actually went to Israel—and let us say this is Israel, out here in Toronto—and the Lord took you up on the roof and said, “Okay, now this is your part: what you can see, and there are even some places that you cannot see,” you would realize how good your inheritance is.
Let me give you an example. We look at the land, and the land translated into New Testament terms is Christ.
I do not want to be disrespectful, but a lot of times we hear that symbol and just throw it away because we have heard it before. But when you say, “This is Christ,” it conjures up a picture in us.
A lot of times the picture it conjures up is of a Christ outside of ourselves. We look at Him as our Savior because of His work on the cross. We say, “Oh, He is my friend,” and, “Oh, He is my Lord.” All these things are outside of ourselves, and then we tend to leave it there.
The thing is, brothers and sisters, if that is all, that is not enough for me. That alone cannot get me through. God did not mean just for that to get me through, because really, that is only half of the story. That is only half of what He has done.
If Christ remains on the outside, you are not finding everything God has for you. So what am I talking about? All these things about Christ outside of us are true: He is our Savior, He is our friend, and He is our Lord. But there is more.
Look at Colossians 1:24-29. Paul says:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church;
Whereof I was made a minister, according to the stewardship from God which was given me to you-ward, to fulfil the word of God,
Even the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to His saints,
To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Whom we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.
Something has been hidden and is now revealed. What is this thing that has been revealed? It is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Then go to Galatians 4:19. Paul is speaking to the Galatians who have gone astray:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
The other half of the picture—and really the end God is after in our lives when we consecrate ourselves unto Him—is that the character of Jesus Christ is formed in us.
I am not saying that we just try to be like Jesus. That is not what I am saying. I am saying that Christ’s character—Who He is—is formed in us because He is in us, and then it comes out of us.
Now, this is the process we have entered into. Notice that it is a process: Christ being formed in us. It is not something that just, boom, happens one day. Oh, I wish it were, but that is not the way it goes.
It is going to be formed in us, and that is what He is after. This is where we get confused. We say, “How in the world can this happen?” Again, we have our eyes in the wrong place.
We look at ourselves and say, “I just do not see it happening.” Of course you do not. Look at the material you have. I do not mean that in a bad way, but when you look at yourself, you say, “Lord, this is just bad material. How can You do that? I do not have this. I do not have that. I do not have the fruit of the Spirit in my life. How can You do these things?”
That is what we want to look at: how is this going to be accomplished? God is out to accomplish it.
Look at Ephesians 2:8-10. This is a very evangelical passage. When I first got saved, I started going to a Baptist church, and these were verses everybody memorized:
For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
Not of works, that no man should glory.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
As a good Baptist, I learned that the real focus was on verses 8 and 9: “By grace you are saved,” because it all has to do with salvation. But salvation is not just that Jesus forgives your sins.
The end of salvation is that we are made in the image of Christ. That is really the end of our salvation. It is not just that you go to heaven; it is that Christ is formed in us. Do you believe that? That is the end of salvation.
The whole thing is based on these things: grace, faith, and this little verse right here: we are the workmanship of God.
Then look at Philippians 2:12-13:
So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
What does this all mean? These are nice verses, but really, what does it mean? What is the practical thing God is trying to say to us?
The process of being formed into the image of Christ is worked out through your personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. It comes no other way. You must have that personal relationship with Him, because that is how He is going to work these things out.
In this relationship, we must understand that God is going to do a work in you. It says that we are His workmanship. He does not give us a transformation manual and then leave us to build this thing on our own, because we would blow it.
I am not really a mechanical person. One year, I bought a barbecue. You would think, when you look at the showroom and see them all sitting there—the finished product—you would say, “I want that.”
Then you go and buy it, and they do not give you the one on the floor. What a surprise. They give you a box with all this stuff in it, with directions in English, Spanish, German, and French. You can pick which ones you want.
I am not going to tell you what my barbecue turned out to look like. Needless to say, it did not look like the one on the showroom floor. Matter of fact, it had some parts missing, unbeknownst to me.
We brought it back, and I am so glad for this: they gave me the showroom model. They do. They do.
But it is a collaboration. God is going to work in you and with you to work out these things.
Your part in putting these things together and working with God is yielding and submitting to Him. Now, I want you to know that yielding or submitting is not a passive thing.
When we think of submitting or yielding, we just think, “Oh, I will just let this happen.” This does not just happen. It is a work of faith.
I do not know if you have been listening to these things, but almost every message has been something about faith. We are called to a life of faith.
This faith is not just believing that Jesus died for my sins. It is believing that God is going to work in me and that He is going to be telling me things. We got the walkie-talkie yesterday, right? He is calling you, telling you what He wants you to do, and then we have to respond to it.
What do you do? You have to respond. James says that faith without works is dead. Faith is an active thing, not a passive thing.
You cannot show your faith without works. That is what James says. Then he gives the example of Abraham.
God told Abraham, “I have given you everything I promised you. I have given you a son, and I said that through this son you are going to have descendants like the stars in the sky. But I want you to take this son, Isaac, and offer him to Me. I want you to sacrifice him to Me.”
How did Abraham show that he believed God? He did not just sit at home and say, “I believe this is what I should do.” He got the donkey, put the wood on it, and took Isaac out there.
Isaac, who was probably around thirty to forty years old, said, “Hey, Dad, where is the sacrifice?” Abraham said, “God will provide Himself.” But he took him out there. That is what you do.
That is yielding. You take what God has told you, and then God works something. Then there comes fruit.
Faith is obedience to what you hear from God. It is a positive response to God moving in your life. Faith is the link that brings the things He says to you—the things you have heard—from the head to the feet. Without faith, that does not happen.
How does He actually do this transformation and this molding of our character? Before I leave this, I want to say once again: so many times we take what God has told us, and then we want to take it into our own hands.
Did you notice that little statue, that little sculpture out there? It is the most lifelike thing, is it not? When I first came out, and even the next day, you come up and think that is a person standing there because of the way it was made, the posture of it, and the position they put it in.
As you get closer, you start saying, “Boy, what funky clothes.” Then you realize it is really different. If you really got up close and looked at it, it was just filled with trash—newspapers crinkled up and stuffed in there.
If you think that in your own strength you are going to conform yourself to the image of Christ, you might have something that looks really good from a distance. But inside, it is just full of trash. That is not what God is after. God is after His work, not your work.
How, then, does He actually do this transformation and this molding of us into the character of Christ? In Zechariah 13:9:
And I will bring the third part through the fire,
And will refine them as silver is refined,
And try them as gold is tried.
They shall call on My name, and I will hear them:
I will say, It is My people;
And they shall say, The Lord is my God.
Notice that this transformation is actually refinement. Human refinement is veneer. We just put on an outside shell, and it goes no deeper than skin. You have heard that beauty is only skin deep. Well, that is the human way of doing it.
We try to refine ourselves. We have an outside look. The Pharisees were always worried about how they looked on the outside. If we are trying to transform ourselves in such a way that we are doing it ourselves, we will always be like that.
The Pharisees had a cleanness on the outside, but they had no heart. Jesus was always telling them, “You are clean on the outside, but where is your heart?” They would complain, “Why are You eating with sinners?” Where is your heart?
Or you end up like the Sadducees. Jesus said their error was that they did not know the Scriptures or the power of God. When we try to refine ourselves, that is the part that is missing: we are missing the power of God in our lives.
God wants us to know His power in our lives, because that is what transforms us—His power. He is not out for veneer.
To refine silver or gold, you have it in ore, or raw form. In raw form, it has all sorts of stuff mixed with it.
What a refiner does to purify it and get the real silver out is put it over a flame. The flame melts the silver, and the other stuff that will not melt rises to the top, and you can pick it out.
That is what is meant by refining. Refining, for that silver ore, probably does not feel very good because you are put into heat. As Harry Truman said, “If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Brothers and sisters, you are going to be tested. Your consecration is going to be tested, not to see how good you can keep your consecration, but to draw out of that consecration the Lord Jesus in your life.
The Lord is not trying to see, when He calls you to Himself, how good you are or how well you can stand up to Him. He is saying, “Okay, I am going to test to see what I can clean out.”
When you are born again, He has put something into you. He has put His Son—the Spirit of His Son, Jesus Christ—into you, and He is out to draw that out. The only way He can do that is by turning up the heat.
What is ahead of you after this time? You have heard all these wonderful things. You are going to be tried and tested. Be aware of that.
It does not mean that you are a failure. Look, for example, at 1 Peter 1:6-7:
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials,
That the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, may be found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
You are going to be put to the test. But do not worry.
There is a wonderful word in Luke 22. At the Last Supper, Peter was saying, “No, Lord, I am never going to leave You, even if I have to die.” The Lord looked at him and said, “Peter, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I prayed for you.”
Brothers and sisters, when you go into these trials, you have Someone interceding for you. The thing He is interceding for is that, as you go through these things, your faith will not fail.
He is not worried about what He is able to accomplish. He is very confident in Himself and in His own ability. But He is concerned for your faith.
When you come into trials, you start doubting yourself and your own commitment. The Lord has to say, “No, it is not based on your frail commitment. It is your faith that I can do these things. I told you that I can do it. Will you believe Me for them? Please stand on that.”
You do not have to try to do these things and say, “I will not deny You,” because we do deny Him. We do fall.
Peter fell grievously. Think of it: probably the person closest to the Lord in His earthly ministry denied the Lord Jesus three times that one night. Then the cock crowed, and it struck him that he had failed. He went off and wept bitterly.
I think he wept for himself. I do not think he wept for the Lord; I think he wept for himself, saying, “I am just not what I thought I was.”
But praise the Lord: when the Lord rose, He came first to Peter. Then later, in John, He could come to Peter and say, “Peter, lovest thou Me?”
Peter could not raise himself to the level the Lord was asking. The Lord was saying, “Peter, do you agape Me?” Peter could only say, “Lord, You know I love You.” That was okay.
The Lord met Peter in his limitation and said, “Peter, do you love Me? Feed My sheep.” Peter was transformed.
If you look at Peter in the Gospels, then read the book of Acts and the letters of Peter, you see that Peter is different. He is no longer one who trusts himself. He has learned to trust the life within him that the Lord has put there.
We are brought into transformation, and then we are molded. That is how we are made into vessels. You do not just leave the molten thing there; you mold it into something. That is the Lord’s desire: vessels of honor.
When the heat comes up, we do not see the Lord’s image in us. We see all the garbage that comes up, and we say, “Oh, how can this ever be?” But the Lord is saying, “I knew that was there. I am after that. I am trying to get that out.”
He is not surprised by any of it. He does not say, “Oh my, I was not expecting this stuff to come out.” But that is how we feel. We say, “Lord, how can You do this?” He says, “I know. That is what I am trying to get. Just be patient with Me.”
We are not patient with the way God works. Philippians says that God will complete His work until the day of Christ Jesus. How long does He have to work? What is His timetable?
I think we say, “It should be done by next week. Come on, let us get a move on.” But the Lord is the Craftsman.
The Lord does not do prefab work. Prefab houses go up real quick. Everything is brought in; the concrete comes, and everything goes up. But the Lord is the Craftsman. He likes to work on things by hand. He knows how to work. He knows what He is doing.
As long as you are cooperative—and by cooperative I mean responding to Him, responding to what He is doing, and responding when He says, “This needs to be done”—then He is at work in that transformation. You do not have to doubt it.
Think about Joseph. Joseph had to be refined. He had these dreams about being a ruler and everything, and he was a teenager. The worst thing to give a young kid is power. Think about that. They can be terrible with power.
I watched The Killing Fields, the story of how the communists took over Cambodia. There was a scene where older people had to be reindoctrinated into the communist system. They put a kid in charge of an older person, and the kid was really hard on him—harder than a parent would be with his children. He had no mercy.
The Lord had to take Joseph, and He let him be sold by his brothers. Joseph had the hope and the idea that the Lord had given him these dreams for some purpose. Because he had them, he let the Lord take him through what He was after in him.
It made Joseph so that, when he saw his brothers again, he forgave them because he knew that God had a higher purpose. If that had not happened in Joseph’s story, things would have been different. Those brothers would have been in trouble, and a couple of them might have been executed right there on the spot.
What about David? Here David is anointed king of Israel, but Saul is king at the same time. Through all his wandering and hiding in the wilderness, David never once grasped at being king.
David said, “Lord, if You really made me king, You do not have to push me out. I am not just going to grab it.” We want to grab at all these things, and we push them. But in time the fruit will come. It will be in His time, not yours.
What is the thing that is going to keep us through all this refining? Brothers and sisters, it is in 1 John 3:3:
And every man that hath this hope set on Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.
Back in verse 2, it says, “When He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him.” Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself. What is going to keep us through all this testing? Hope.
What is hope? Let me define it. Do they still have hope chests? My mom had a whole set, and we always wondered why it was called a hope chest.
Women would save things for their marriage. They were looking toward the day they were going to be married, and they would put things away. They might have sewn their own wedding gown and put it in the hope chest. They would put away linen, dishes, and silverware in preparation for the day they were going to be married.
They did it because they were confident that they were going to be married. And it is a good thing women do that, because guys bring nothing into the marriage. My wife had things. I had a couple of glasses and a couple of bars of soap, and that was it.
Hope is not saying, “Oh my, I sure hope this is going to happen,” like there is doubt. There is no doubt in hope. Hope is expectation of things that will be.
Joseph had that hope in those dreams. “This is going to be,” he said. “Therefore, I am going to hold on to it.” When Potiphar’s wife came to him, he could say, “How can I do that?” because he had hope that something better was happening, that something better was going to come out.
David had that same hope. When he was in the cave and someone said, “There is Saul right there. Let us get him,” David said, “No, I cannot do that. My hope is that I will be king, but this is not the way it is going to be. The Lord will make the change. I do not have to do it myself.”
Hope is tremendously important. Look at Romans 4:16-21, speaking about Abraham:
Therefore it is of faith, that it may be according to grace; to the end that the promise may be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.
As it is written, A father of many nations have I made thee, before Him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not, as though they were.
Who in hope believed against hope, to the end that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, So shall thy seed be.
And without being weakened in faith he considered his own body now as good as dead, he being about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb;
Yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God,
And being fully assured that what He had promised, He was able also to perform.
Is that not interesting? God calls those things that do not exist as though they did. When God got hold of Jacob, He called him Israel, and then in the next chapter you see him acting like Jacob again. But to God, he was Israel. God sees the finished work, and He knows He has to bring Jacob along.
Abraham did not consider his own body, already as good as dead, nor the deadness of Sarah’s womb. I mean, he was ninety-nine. Come on.
He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, fully convinced that what God had promised, God was able to perform.
That is hope. Hope draws out faith and puts us in the place where it is God who has to do these things. I look at myself and say, “How could this ever be?” He says, “I do not even consider this. I am not going to consider those things against me. I am going to consider Him.”
That is where my focus should be: on Him. He is the One who is going to see you through these things. He is the One who is going to build Christ in me.
Hebrews 6:19 talks about hope as an anchor. When you hit these trials you are going to come into because of your standing and saying, “I want to be consecrated for these works,” hope is an anchor. When these things try to push you out of the way, it holds you fast. That anchor is held fast within the veil.
Then 1 Thessalonians 5:8 talks about hope as a helmet. What does a helmet do? It protects your head. What is in your head? Your brain. And what is in your brain? Your mind.
When you get into trials and difficulties, the enemy goes right to the mind: “Oh, look at you. You will never do it. You do not have what it takes. You do not have the right material.”
Put on the helmet. Those things go down because you have hope. “My hope is in God. I do not have anything, but God is going to do His thing.” Hope is a helmet.
What is to be our response? How do we respond to God’s working in our lives? Let us go back to Joshua.
In Joshua 14:6-14, Caleb comes to Joshua at Gilgal. He reminds Joshua that Moses had promised him an inheritance because he had wholly followed the Lord.
Caleb says:
I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in my heart.
Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt; but I wholly followed the Lord my God.
And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy foot hath trodden shall be an inheritance to thee and to thy children for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God.
And now, behold, the Lord hath kept me alive, as He spake, these forty and five years… and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.
As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me…
Now therefore give me this hill-country, whereof the Lord spake in that day… if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall drive them out, as the Lord spake.
Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb as an inheritance because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel.
Joshua is symbolic in the book of Joshua of Jesus. Caleb could go to Joshua and say, “You brought me into this land. I have seen it, and I have said it is good. I believe you are able to give these things to me.”
And Jesus says, “You are right. I am, and I am going to bless you, and I am going to give you Hebron.”
The word “Hebron” means fellowship. Fellowship means a sharing. We give something, and we get something. What we give to the Lord in this fellowship is really paltry compared to what He gives to us.
But that is okay with the Lord. He does not say, “Is this all you have to give Me?” He says, “I will take that. Here, let Me give you.” That is fellowship.
In doing this, though, you have to go through the refining. In Philippians 3:10-11, Paul says:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed unto His death;
If by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.
I want to know the life. To know the life, I am going to have to be worked down and refined. I am going to have to go through some death. I am going to have fellowship with Him in His sufferings.
But the wonderful thing about fellowship with Him in His sufferings is that it always comes to resurrection. Resurrection, brothers and sisters, is a powerful life. It is not a natural thing; it is a powerful thing.
You will know this life of resurrection. You will say, “Yes, that is just what he was talking about.”
Later on, in Joshua 15:13-19, Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak. Then he said that whoever attacked Kiriath-sepher and took it, he would give Achsah, his daughter, as his wife.
Caleb was an older saint. What we have to get from older saints is encouragement to go on like they did. Caleb said, “Here I have killed these giants. I have taken what I have. Who wants that? Come on, you can do it.”
Othniel took the land, and later became a judge in Israel. Then Caleb’s daughter came to him and said, “Give me a blessing, because you have given me land in the South; give me also springs of water.”
So Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. In other words, we receive encouragement from older saints and say, “Where did you get your springs? I need these springs like you have.”
Caleb did not say, “You just have to make do with what you have.” He gave to her because he loved her. That is the heart of our Father.
Now in closing, what is our real response here? It is like Paul said in Philippians 3:12-14:
Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect: but I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.
Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Our prayer is that we lay hold of that for which the Lord has laid hold of us. He laid hold of you for a purpose. I pray, “Lord, the reason You laid hold of me, I want that consummated. I want to see that in my life.”
I press forward. I go on. I do not look back. I do not stand still. It is a moving thing.
If you serve the Lord in your consecration and say, “I want to serve the Lord,” the prize is this: “It is enough that a servant be like his master.”
The prize is not just the outward sense of what we have in Christ. It is Christ in here. It is the hope of glory.
Heavenly Father, I know there are verses that confuse me and even hurt me in my heart. When I read where Paul says, “For me to live is Christ,” and then I look at myself, I just say, “That is not me. O Lord, how can this be?”
How can it be that You can say these things? Are You mocking us? But Lord, I know You are not mocking us. I know You are not saying that we have to try to attain these things.
You are saying, “Do You not understand that I have provided everything for you? I have put My Son in you. Just cooperate with Me. Just listen to Me, hear My voice, and respond to Me. Give Me the freedom to work in you, and I will perfect what I have begun to do.”
O Lord, give us a faith that would connect to that. Give us faith that will lay hold of You. Turn us away from our ideas that somehow we have to do these things ourselves.
Help us to find, Lord, that we can rest on You, that we can have hope—an expectation. It is not us, but it is You who are able to work these things.
O Lord, please give us this faith. Give us this vision of You doing these things, of You completing these things, so that we can give ourselves to the refining work.
These things are beyond us unless You help us. So we give ourselves to You for Your help, for Your doing the things that You want to do in our lives.
Lord, we say we do not understand, but we trust You for that understanding so that we will come near to You and not hold ourselves away, saying, “How can I come? I just cannot do these things.”
May we come saying, “O Lord, it is beyond me, but I come and offer myself to You anyway, and say, ‘Your will be done.’”
O Lord, we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.