Monday, October 12, 2009

Devotional 121009

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. It is nice to have a compensation day off after a busy weekend. It was really exhausting to teach a 5 hours class on Saturday, and preach in two worship service on Sunday. But by God’s grace, I managed to handle them. Pray that God will continue to do His work within the hearts of the hearers.

Enoch walked with God" (Genesis 5:24). The test of a man's religious life and character is not what he does in the exceptional moments of life, but what he does in the ordinary times, when there is nothing tremendous or exciting on. The worth of a man is revealed in his attitude to ordinary things when he is not before the divine enlightenment. It is a painful business to get through into the pace of God, it means getting your second wind spiritually. In learning to walk with God there is always the difficulty of getting into His pace; but when we have got into it, the only characteristic that manifests itself is the life of God. The individual man is lost sight of in his personal union with God, and the pace and the power of God alone are manifested.

It is difficult to get into pace with God, because when we start walking with Him we find He has surpassed us before we have taken three steps. He has different ways of doing things, and we have to be trained and disciplined into His ways. It was said of Jesus - "He shall not fail nor be discouraged," because He never worked from His own individual standpoint but always from the standpoint of His Father, and we have to learn to do the same. Spiritual truth is learned by atmosphere, not by intellectual reasoning. God's Spirit alters the atmosphere of our way of looking at things, and things begin to be possible which never were possible before. Getting into the pace of God means nothing less than union with Himself. It takes a long time to get there, but keep at it. Don't give in because the pain is bad just now, get on with it, and before long you will find you have a new vision and a new purpose.

This is so profound yet so real in our spiritual formation. We learn to walk with God not by focusing on what we think and want. The more we focus on how we want to become more “spiritual,” the more we lose sight of what God wants to do in and with our lives. The lesson of yielding and submission is significant for our spiritual growth. Unfortunately, this is the lesson we always want to avoid. We hate the feeling of being out of “self control.” We like to be on the driving seat and enjoy the liberty to go wherever we want to. We insist on what we want as though we know better. We want to assert our individuality, which is directly contradictive to way for spiritual growth. The spiritual guideline is the more we yield to God, the closer we draw to Him. Listen carefully to Him in wherever you are, to see how God want you to yield to Him today.

Love you in His sight,
Lawrence

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