Jesus did not say that everyone must cut off his right hand, but that “if your right hand causes you to sin” in your walk with Him, then it is better to “cut it off.” There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God you cannot do them. Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that if it hinders you in following His precepts, then “cut it off.” The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.When God changes you through regeneration, giving you new life through spiritual rebirth, your life initially has the characteristic of being maimed.

There are a hundred and one things that you dare not do— things that would be sin for you, and would be recognized as sin by those who really know you. But the unspiritual people around you will say, “What’s so wrong with doing that? How absurd you are!” There has never yet been a saint who has not lived a maimed life initially. Yet it is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God’s sight than to appear lovely to man’s eyes but lame to God’s. At first, Jesus Christ through His Spirit has to restrain you from doing a great many things that may be perfectly right for everyone else but not right for you. Yet, see that you don’t use your restrictions to criticize someone else.

 

The Christian life is a maimed life initially, but in Matthew 5:48 Jesus gave us the picture of a perfectly well-rounded life— “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

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June 29 2015

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Lord, this is a very difficult teaching: That we are to consider cutting off an arm or to poke out an eye in order to keep us from doing the wrong things. This sounds like a metaphor that I want to avoid reading and studying. It seems too harsh, too legalistic to be a part of what God has been teaching us.

And God says…”Recall Romans 8:1 …there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Before the time of Christ and woven within the culture during His time on earth, there was law and judgments to cut off the right hand and or gouge out the right eye as payment for wrong doing. Here Jesus tells you that if whatever gets in the way of your relationship with Christ must be cut off and thrown into Gehenna…(the place for dumping defiled objects of the Jewish faith).”

“Whatever gets between you and surrender, connection, curiosity and spirit led obedience must be eliminated. During your mornings when you seek to surrender and be strongly connected, do you leave the music up loud? Do you try to pray when people are all around you talking to you? You eliminated your distractions so that you could be surrendered and intimately connected to Me“

“There is no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. When you are a child of God, I cannot see your sin, I can only see Jesus. But whatever gets between your surrender, connection, curiosity and obedience must be eliminated so that you can live allowing the very Spirit of God to live through you. This is why I say it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. His money gets in the way of his surrender and connection. His self-sufficiency can get in the way.  Family obligations can get in the way, as can church service, and church “busy-ness”. This lesson is about removing whatever is in the way of your surrender and connection to Jesus.”

“Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways and do not rely on your own understanding and He will make your paths straight. And when you are not strong enough to do this, simply surrender, and allow Jesus to do it for you, while providing all the grace required to fill the gaps created and left by your humanity.”