Complete in Thee: The Lord's

Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Lord's

"One shall say, 'I am the LORD's...'"
(Isaiah 44:5)

"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's."
(1 Corinthians 6:19,20)

"...Whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's."
(Romans 14:8)

Isn't there great peace and joy and purpose in knowing that Jesus Christ bought us out of the slave market of sin so that we may know Him, belong to Him, and serve Him? To know that He holds us secure and will not let us go? To identify ourselves by His name and know that our Master and King will never fail or forsake us? In reading these verses the other day, I was filled with a sense of excitement as I thought about belonging to God. I also could not help but wonder: What great troubles arise when we forget the fact that we are bought out of slavery to sin by the blood of Jesus Christ and now belong to God. What a sad life in which a person lives as though he were his own master, following the desires of His flesh and forgetting the one who gave His very life for his ransom!

I wonder how different our lives would be if we more often considered ourselves as "property of God" so to speak (in these sense of the verses above.) Earthly things would take the back burner and matters of eternal value would take precedence in our lives. Hedonism and selfishness would be replaced with a desire to do God's will and please Him. I wonder how many things we would stop doing and how many things we would start doing, for His glory. For, having been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and saved from sin, we no longer have to obey the devil; we are free to obey God, finally!! We can now live the life that God intended us to live when He created us!

It is a comfort to reflect on the character of our Master-- faithful, loving, just, true, holy, merciful , gracious-- and we are privileged to follow in His steps! As servants of God, let us not "entangle ourselves with the affairs of this life, that we may please Him who hath chosen us to be a soldier." May our lives be characterized by a joyful readiness to do His will!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Very good post, Melanie! Realizing Who our Master is and realizing that we are "dead to sin" will really help keep us from sin. We need that reminder!; December 14, 2009 at 3:24 PM
Hanna-col said...: Hey, Melanie, just letting you know I've tagged you.

~Hanne-col; December 14, 2009 at 9:34 PM
Amanda said...: Very thought-provoking!; December 16, 2009 at 6:21 PM

PRAYER REQUESTS

"Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints" (Ephesians 6:18)

PLEASE PRAY...

* That I would draw nearer to God every day and never allow my relationship to become stagnant ritual; particularly that I would grow in the area of submission, patience, 1 Corinthians 13 love, and wholehearted devotion

* That I might have wisdom as I edit "The Marquis' Daughter"; that the Lord would bless and work through it; and that I might find just the right publisher for it.

* That I would submit to the Lord's work in my life, whatever it may be; that I would take each opportunity He brings me (even the seemingly hard ones) to draw closer to Him and point others to Him

*That our Etsy shop might be successful and that it would be a means by which we can glorify God and share the Gospel

Ephesians 2:1-10

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

"The heart set to do the Father's will need never fear defeat. His promises of guidance may be fully counted upon. Does it make sense to believe that the Shepherd would care less about getting His sheep where He wants them to go than they care about getting there?"

"God is God. Because He is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will, a will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to."

"If God, like a father, denies us what we want now it is in order to give us some far better thing later on. The will of God, we can rest assured, is invariably a better thing."

"Obedience to God's will is the secret of spiritual knowledge and insight. It is not willingness to know, but willingness to DO (obey) God's will that brings certainty."

"Victory over all the circumstances of life comes not by might, nor by power, but by a practical confidence in God and by allowing His Spirit to dwell in our hearts and control our actions and emotions. Learn in the days of ease and comfort, to think in terms of the prayer that follows, so that when the days of hardship come you will be fully prepared and equipped to meet them."

"And shall I pray, Oh, change Thy will, my Father,
Until it be according unto mine?
Ah no, Lord, no, that never could be, rather
I pray Thee, Blend my human will with Thine."

"A crucified life cannot be self-assertive. It cannot protect itself. It cannot be startled into resentful words. The cup that is full of sweet water cannot spill bitter-tasting drops, however sharply it is knocked."

"And as we rest our hearts upon what we know (the certainty of the ultimate triumph of good), leaving what we do not know to the Love that has led us all our life long, the peace of God enters into us and abides. And then we see our light."

[A Practicing Christian]...it means that every single act and feeling, every experience, whether pleasant or unpleasant, must be referred to God. It means looking at everything as something that comes from Him, and always looking to Him and asking His will first, and saying, "How would he wish me to deal with this?"

Christ says: "Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you."

"I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey."

"What is saving but taking us out of the dark into the light? There is no salvation but to know God and grow like Him."

"I will not try to convince you of anything about God. I cannot. You must know Him. I only tell you I believe in Him with all my heart. You must ask Him to explain Himself to you, and not take it for granted that He has done you a wrong because He has done what you do not like. Whether you seek Him or not, He will do you justice. But He cannot explain Himself unless you seek Him."

"Sometimes a thunderbolt will shoot from a clear sky; and sometimes into the life of a peaceful individual, without warning of gathered storm, something terrible will fall. And from that moment everything is changed. That life is no more what it was. Better it ought to be, worse it may be. The result depends on the life itself and it's response to the invading storm of trouble. Forever after, it's spiritual weather is altered. But for the one who believes in God, such rending and frightful catastrophies never come but where they are turned around for good in his own life and in other lives he touches."