Devotional 231008

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. How blessed we are to be in His training school each day! His goal is to bring out the potentials or gifts that He has bestowed upon us since the day we were conceived in our mother’s womb. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139: 14-16). A lot of time, it is our fears, worries and rebellions that prohibit Him to process His good works within us. Only if we allow Him, listen to Him and obey Him, we will see changes in us that are far exceeding our imagination. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” We are a new creation IF we are in Christ. So the challenge is to abide IN Christ; which is to listen and obey Him at all time. Then the new creation that God intended for us to have; the life Christ will grow within us.
Our Lord never nurses our prejudices or unfair judgments; He mortifies them and cleans them thoroughly. We imagine that God has a special interest in our particular prejudices; we are quite sure that God will never deal with our prejudices, as He has to deal with other people. "God must deal with other people in a very harsh way, but of course He knows that my prejudices are all right." We have to learn - "Not a bit of it!" Instead of God being on the side of our prejudices, He is deliberately wiping them out. It is part of our moral education to have our prejudices run straight across by His providence, and to watch how He does it. God pays no respect to anything we bring to Him. There is only one thing God wants of us, and that is our unconditional surrender; God wants us to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).
When we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to work His new creation in us, and there will come a time when there is not a bit of the old order left, the old value judgment goes, the old attitude toward things and people goes, and "all things are of God." How are we going to get the life that has no lust, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to ridicules, the love that is not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth, the love that always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres and always kind? The only way is by allowing not a bit of the old life to be left in us; but only simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God's blessings, but only want God Himself. Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him? When once we see God at work, we will never bother our heads about things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in Heaven Whom the world cannot see.
Our dear Heavenly Father, this kind of new life is beyond our human ability that can realize. But we trust in you who can accomplish all things in us. You are the trainer and our life coach. We surrender our lives to your hands, so that you can freely nurture a new creation in us for your glory. Amen. Hope you will join me in that prayer each day.
Love you according to His new order,
Lawrence