Devotional 250909

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. My itchy problem is improving. My herbal doctor prescribed some medicine for me to try. I hope it works. This morning I have to speak at a senior citizens’ fellowship. Pray that the Lord will speak through me to encourage this group of seniors. I will have a very busy weekend in preaching and teaching. Please pray for all my preparation. Thanks!

"If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles" (Matthew 5:41). The summing up of Our Lord's teaching is that the relationship which He demands is an impossible one unless He has done a supernatural work in us. Jesus Christ demands that there be not the slightest trace of resentment even suppressed in the heart of a disciple when he meets with tyranny and injustice. No enthusiasm will ever stand the strain that Jesus Christ will put upon His worker, only one thing will, and that is a personal relationship to Himself which has gone through the mill of His spring-cleaning until there is only one purpose left - I am here for God to send me where He will. Every other thing may get fogged, but this relationship to Jesus Christ must never be.

The Sermon on the Mount is not an ideal, it is a statement of what will happen in me when Jesus Christ has altered my disposition and put in a disposition like His own. Jesus Christ is the only One Who can fulfill the Sermon on the Mount.

If we are to be disciples of Jesus, we must be made disciples supernaturally; as long as we have the dead set purpose of being disciples we may be sure we are not. "I have chosen you." That is the way the grace of God begins. It is a constraint we cannot get away from; we can disobey it, but we cannot generate it. The drawing is done by the supernatural grace of God, and we never can trace where His work begins. Our Lord's making of a disciple is supernatural. He does not build on any natural capacity at all. God does not ask us to do the things that are easy to us naturally; He only asks us to do the things we are perfectly fitted to do by His grace, and the cross will come along that line always.

I totally agree that we can do nothing apart from Him. If we can bear any Spiritual fruit, we have to abide in Him at all time. Spiritual Fruit must come from the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the presence of Christ that lives within and among us. Without the regeneration work of the Holy Spirit, our inner being will not be able to live out the kind of life that Jesus prescribed in His sermon on the Mount. The bottom line is abiding in obedience. Our Christian living is from obedience to obedience. It was Christ who had chosen us to bear fruit on earth. It was also Christ who will bring us back to eternal home from earth. In both incidences, all we need to do is obedience. We just humbly receive the work of God in us, and learn to anticipate His desire and calling for us, by initiating our obedience in doing His will in everyday of our lives, toward the goal of making disciples of ALL nations. And the strength to do so is again, obedience. Have an obedient weekend in serving the Lord in wherever He places you.

Love you by obedience to His will,
Lawrence