Heart Procedure
My heart hurts as it struggles against my love for the LORD and my love for self. My desire to please my idol is strong but my need to follow Christ is crushing. God takes my breath away. The Holy Spirit pulls and pushes stronger than gravity. My knees break in His presence. What you have is temporally pleasing as it feeds my dying flesh. The world judges my character based on imperfections alone. Through its eyes, its sees no hope and no solution apart from more sin. It tells me that I should walk in my desires and feed the flesh. The world be littles the Lord’s holiness based on his dealings with sinners. Its priests and prophets urge me to be a better me. But how do you fix an eternal flaw with finite remedies? My heart reaches beyond here, pass its illusions grasping for something solid. My fingers swipe through blurry crowns seeing 1 and never getting there. Without the crossbeam I’m forever hopeless because my arms are to short, always missing the mark.
2 Corinthians 13:5-10
5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you? unless indeed you fail to meet the test! 6 I hope you will find out that we have not failed the test. 7 But we pray to God that you may not do wrong not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed. 8 For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth. 9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for. 10 For this reason I write these things while I am away from you, that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.
Just read this devotion, thought you may enjoy it. God bless friend.
TUESDAY, JUNE 14, 2011
THE GREATEST DANGER
by David Wilkerson
The greatest danger we all face is not being able to see Jesus in our
troubles—instead we see ghosts. In that peak moment of fear when the night is
the blackest and the storm is the angriest, Jesus always draws near to us, to
reveal himself as the Lord of the flood, the Savior in storms. “The Lord
sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever” (Psalm 29:10).
In Matthew 14, Jesus ordered his disciples into a boat that was headed for a
storm. The Bible says he constrained them to get into a ship. It was headed for
troubled waters; it would be tossed about like a bobbing cork. Where was Jesus?
He was up in the mountains overlooking the sea; he was there, praying for them
not to fail in the test he knew they must go through.
You would think that at least one disciple would have recognized what was
happening and said, “Look friends, Jesus said he would never leave us or
forsake us. He sent us on this mission; we are in the center of his will. He
said the steps of a righteous man are order by himself. Look again. That’s
our Lord! He is right here! We’ve never once been out of his sight.”
But not one disciple recognized him. They did not expect him to be in their
storm. Never, ever did they expect him to be with them, or even near them, in a
storm! But he did come, walking on the water.
There was only one lesson to be learned, only one. It was a simple lesson, not
some deep, mystical, earth-shattering one. Jesus simply wanted to be trusted as
their Lord, in every storm of life. He simply wanted them to maintain their
cheer and confidence, even in the blackest hours of trial. That’s all.
Thank you, I did enjoy it God bless you for that. I believe a big part of growth is self examination in a way that is honest. Also, we should be able to do this with the body of Christ without judgement that condemns. A long with that is knowing God and God knowing us. We must press toward not just hoping Jesus is with us but having a conviction of certainity of his presence.