What Is Your Will In Christ?

"Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord.""   Jeremiah 9:23-24 (NKJV) There are those hard times that come at us as followers of Christ that strip away something that we've come to rely on as a stable part of our life here. Those times can be a good thing when it comes to stripping away  something  that has inhibited our drawing nearer to Christ or has stymied our growth as His followers. Even so, those occasions may hurt initially, but at some point we may likely be able to look back with gratitude and recognize how the Lord has used these things to prosper us in His eternal economy and change us further into His likeness. There are other hard times that come tho...

"The Lord knows the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the wicked shall perish; And the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish. Into smoke they shall vanish away."   Psalm 37:18-20 (NKJV) How is it that we, the redeemed, dishonored by even the slightest of our own choices and motives in error, and born into the rebellious household of mankind, become willing captives and heirs of Christ, freed of sin to revel in His glory? It seems scandalous to us if well thought out, but as followers of Christ we know that the justice of it lies in the depth of His sacrifice.   If taken by ourselves and measured against God who created us, God against whom we have, even if by our own thoughts, rebelled, we would have no real, distinguishable, value. Yet He assigns us a value of the highest order- a value worthy of His own terrible and ...

"He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”  Psalm 91:1-2  (NKJV) Whatever's happening in the world needs to take a back seat to whatever the Lord is doing in our own lives. We could easily become overwhelmed with concern about what's going on "out there" when the most consequential happenings to us are those taking place in the relationship that we claim to hold most dear - the one between us and the Lord our God. "Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday."  Psal...

"Who among you will give ear to this?  Who will listen and hear for the time to come?  Who gave Jacob for plunder, and Israel to the robbers?  Was it not the Lord,  He against whom we have sinned?  For they would not walk in His ways, n or were they obedient to His law.  Therefore He has poured on him the fury of His anger a nd the strength of battle;  It has set him on fire all around, y et he did not know;  And it burned him, y et he did not take it to heart."  Isaiah 42:23-25 (NKJV) So much history given to learn from, yet so many refuse to learn. The insolence and outright evil occurring in so many places these days is astounding and the rise to designate the followers of Christ as the public enemy increases steadily, seemingly without any true alarm- even in nations that once claimed to embrace God by majority. There's a drive to remove and rewrite the past to eliminate so many things that were learned from actual hard lessons of histor...

"Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the Lord." Jeremiah 9:23-24 (NKJV) I wonder, my brothers and sisters in Christ, how much do we really know personally about our God and Father? If we don't know Him intimately, the fault and shame of it may be our own if we've failed to seek Him out on His own terms as He sovereignly requires... "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:13 (NKJV) "But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul." Deuteronomy 4:29 (NKJV) The Lord God declares His rightful place in existence over ev...

"For thus says the High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry; For the spirit would fail before Me, and the souls which I have made.""  Isaiah 57:15-16 (NKJV) Man using all of his intellect, wisdom, and all that he is - in his fiercest rage...  ...has no more power against the God that created him, or against His Word,  than that of a grain of sand...   ...Yet so many among mankind seem to think that they can rebel against God and get away with it. They disbelieve and blaspheme, commit crimes against Him, against what He's created, and against His just reign over all that He's created - including His reign over man himself. Still His patience with man persists in the hope of man's repentance... as long as hope persists....