Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Devotional 301208

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good afternoon. Thanks for praying for our Missions Conference. We had a wonderful gathering to see and hear the work of God throughout the world. I wished that you all were there with us. Our speakers were all international level and had great missions experiences. They did not only share with us their knowledge in missions but their heart and life experience. Loretta and I had learnt a great deal, and our hearts were challenged by the Presence of God. We re-dedicated ourselves to serve our Lord of Missions in whatever capacity that He desires to use us. After all, this is the kind of new life that we are called to live through His Grace.

Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He re-makes the whole man on the inside. "Put on the new man," i.e., see that your natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life that God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ. Watch how God will wither up your confidence in natural virtues after sanctification, and in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!

The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ, which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life, which God has put in us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.

As we are preparing for the coming of a new year, let’s learn to put on this new Life in Christ – seek not to depend on our old self but depending on His grace each day.

Have a blessed new year to come.

Love you in Christ,
Lawrence

No comments: