After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”

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November 10, 2014

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Lord, I found this devotional a little confusing. Chambers says that I am to give up all my personal plans once and for all, if I am to be used by You. But Lord, I thought if we surrendered our hopes and plans to You that our plans were, or are, in fact Your plans for us. Are we to constantly wonder if we are connected to Your plans, constantly questioning our hopes and dreams? How can we be certain that our hopes, dreams and plans for living are the hopes, dreams and plans you You have given us?

And God says…”Acknowledge Me in all your ways, and do not rely on your own ways and means or understanding and I will make your paths straight. Delight yourself in Me and I will give you the desires of your heart. If you spend your prayer time seeking to be connected to Me you will understand to the point of really knowing that this idea, or that thought or plan comes from Me. (Draw near to Me and I will draw near to you).”

“ Perhaps you can spend more of your early morning prayer time, seeking connection with Me, surrendering your own ideas and thoughts to Me. Simply “see” yourself placing your life, loves, fears, activities, hopes and dreams at the foot of the cross; know that you have  consciously surrendered them to Me, and then live your day. I will guide you for I am the way the truth and the life.  Know that you are made righteous by Jesus, and the steps of a righteous man are guided by Me.”