Devotional 240209

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good afternoon. My morning went by so fast with two meetings. I could hardly have time to read ‘My utmost for His Highest’ for my meditation. There was so much to catch up after I took a day off yesterday. All and all, it was a meaningful morning and two fruitful meetings as well, though I wished I could start my day to listen to God through some quiet time. Praise the Lord!
"I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well" (2 Corinthians 12:15). When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ's interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our kinship; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only - that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. "To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings" (1 Cor. 9:22-23).
When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a platform, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a "door-mat" without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things that liberate us spiritually. That was not Paul's motive. "I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race" (Rom 9:3) - wild, extravagant - is it? When a man is in love it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ.
The kind of love is the goal of our spiritual journey with God. We learn to give ourselves totally to Christ, so that He has total freedom to do anything with our lives. Have mercy on me O Lord. Give me the burning desire from within to love you with my whole being. Purify my passion and motive, so that I totally belong to you.
Love you with His passion,
Lawrence