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.”

___________________________________________________________

November 10, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I am once again in need of your grace today. I seem to always find it right where you placed it, with and in Jesus. Thank you for providing never ending grace in the person of Jesus Christ and allowing me to always find your grace and everything I can and will ever need right at the foot of the cross.

And God says…”All things are possible and available in Christ Jesus. I save you in Christ Jesus and have known your beginning and ending and all that you do and do not over your entire life, and I love you. The grace of Jesus covers you as He comes to give you life and life more abundantly. Look to Jesus for all your answers and for your direction. Trust in the Lord, seek first His Kingdom, delight yourself in Him and your life shall be full as you share the fullness with others.”

The Christian worker has to be a sacred “go-between.” He must be so closely identified with his Lord and the reality of His redemption that Christ can continually bring His creating life through him. I am not referring to the strength of one individual’s personality being superimposed on another, but the real presence of Christ coming through every aspect of the worker’s life. When we preach the historical facts of the life and death of our Lord as they are conveyed in the New Testament, our words are made sacred. God uses these words, on the basis of His redemption, to create something in those who listen which otherwise could never have been created. If we simply preach the effects of redemption in the human life instead of the revealed, divine truth regarding Jesus Himself, the result is not new birth in those who listen. The result is a refined religious lifestyle, and the Spirit of God cannot witness to it because such preaching is in a realm other than His. We must make sure that we are living in such harmony with God that as we proclaim His truth He can create in others those things which He alone can do.

When we say, “What a wonderful personality, what a fascinating person, and what wonderful insight!” then what opportunity does the gospel of God have through all of that? It cannot get through, because the attraction is to the messenger and not the message. If a person attracts through his personality, that becomes his appeal. If, however, he is identified with the Lord Himself, then the appeal becomes what Jesus Christ can do. The danger is to glory in men, yet Jesus says we are to lift up only Him (see John 12:32).

__________________________________________________

November 9, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Just about the time I begin to feel  holy and righteous, because I have come so far as a believer, I do something that painfully reminds me of how far I have not come; I decide to do something outside of God’s will…..and I  remind myself of of Adam and Eve and their blatant disobedience.

And God says…”Those things you do not wish to do, you will do. And those things that you wish to do you will not do. Who will save you from this never-ending predicament? Jesus has already provided the salvation and as you look to Him He will keep saving you, (sanctifying you) day by day by day. When you slip and fall get right back up, acknowledge your disobedience, truly repent and I will forgive you over and over and over and over and over toward an eternal definition of grace.”

“And all the while, as you focus on Jesus and the cross, by the power of the Holy Spirit within you, you will be changing from the inside out. Your disobedience slowly becomes a fading memory as you become more and more like Christ, until it is no longer you that lives, but Christ in you.”

We realize that we are energized by the Holy Spirit for prayer; and we know what it is to pray in accordance with the Spirit; but we don’t often realize that the Holy Spirit Himself prays prayers in us which we cannot utter ourselves. When we are born again of God and are indwelt by the Spirit of God, He expresses for us the unutterable.

“He,” the Holy Spirit in you, “makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). And God searches your heart, not to know what your conscious prayers are, but to find out what the prayer of the Holy Spirit is.

The Spirit of God uses the nature of the believer as a temple in which to offer His prayers of intercession. “. . . your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit . . .” (1 Corinthians 6:19). When Jesus Christ cleansed the temple, “. . . He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple” (Mark 11:16). The Spirit of God will not allow you to use your body for your own convenience. Jesus ruthlessly cast out everyone who bought and sold in the temple, and said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer . . . . But you have made it a ’den of thieves’ ” (Mark 11:17).

Have we come to realize that our “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit”? If so, we must be careful to keep it undefiled for Him. We have to remember that our conscious life, even though only a small part of our total person, is to be regarded by us as a “temple of the Holy Spirit.” He will be responsible for the unconscious part which we don’t know, but we must pay careful attention to and guard the conscious part for which we are responsible.

__________________________________________________________

November 8, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Knowing You are living inside of me, that you are everywhere I am, comforts me. Knowing You will withhold nothing good from me as evidenced by Jesus and the cross, reminds me of my privileged place.

Lord, Thank you for these reminders. Thank you for the fullness of Your Spirit.

And God says…”When you worship Me the Holy Spirit living inside of you joins  with My Spirit, we are connected and you are confident and courageous of your place in Me. The circumstances do not matter, the situation is unimportant, you are confident of your place in Me. Stay connected to Me in prayer and worship, all day long. Pray without ceasing, and live an abundant life, day by day. Know I am here with you.”

 “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” Isaiah 43:1

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be moved, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed.” Isaiah 54:10

Martha believed in the power available to Jesus Christ; she believed that if He had been there He could have healed her brother; she also believed that Jesus had a special intimacy with God, and that whatever He asked of God, God would do. But— she needed a closer personal intimacy with Jesus. Martha’s theology had its fulfillment in the future. But Jesus continued to attract and draw her in until her belief became an intimate possession. It then slowly emerged into a personal inheritance— “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ . . .” (John 11:27).

Is the Lord dealing with you in the same way? Is Jesus teaching you to have a personal intimacy with Himself? Allow Him to drive His question home to you— “Do you believe this?” Are you facing an area of doubt in your life? Have you come, like Martha, to a crossroads of overwhelming circumstances where your theology is about to become a very personal belief? This happens only when a personal problem brings the awareness of our personal need.

To believe is to commit. In the area of intellectual learning I commit myself mentally, and reject anything not related to that belief. In the realm of personal belief I commit myself morally to my convictions and refuse to compromise. But in intimate personal belief I commit myself spiritually to Jesus Christ and make a determination to be dominated by Him alone.

Then, when I stand face to face with Jesus Christ and He says to me, “Do you believe this?” I find that faith is as natural as breathing. And I am staggered when I think how foolish I have been in not trusting Him earlier

______________________________________________________

November 6, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

The lyric from this song says it best…. ”Savior please…. keep saving me.”

And God says…”I began a good work within you and I will complete it. Yours is but to surrender. And all things will work toward this effort….your surrender, until; you become invisible and all that remains is Christ Jesus.”

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, “Oh, I can’t deal with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.

The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered “according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19), having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. When it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering— the way of the “long road home.”

Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”

______________________________________________________

November 5, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Today God brought a number of things together in a way that I could see Him working in and through my life and the lives of those I love. People met other people, needs were met and I was able to make some sense of my most recent business dealings. But it all came together and made sense NOT because I got all the answers I needed and all problems were solved. It all seemed to come together because I was looking for and at Jesus.

 And God says…”I am the way, the truth and the light. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added to you. I came to give you life and life more abundantly. Look to Me and you will find the answers for all your questions. It is not easy to seek Me in the midst of a storm, but when you stay connected with Me there is no need for seeking and the storms come and go and you hardly pay them notice”.

“The Lord will keep you from all harm–he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.” Psalm 121:7, 8

It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual— you cannot act for him. It must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message should always lead him to action. Refusing to act leaves a person paralyzed, exactly where he was previously. But once he acts, he is never the same. It is the apparent folly of the truth that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Once I press myself into action, I immediately begin to live. Anything less is merely existing. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will.

When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will, not necessarily externally in your physical life. Record it with ink and with blood— work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, confess we are wrong, but go back again. Then we approach it again and turn back, until we finally learn we have no business going back. When we are confronted with such a word of truth from our redeeming Lord, we must move directly to transact business with Him. “Come to Me . . .” (Matthew 11:28). His word come means “to act.” Yet the last thing we want to do is come. But everyone who does come knows that, at that very moment, the supernatural power of the life of God invades him. The dominating power of the world, the flesh, and the devil is now paralyzed; not by your act, but because your act has joined you to God and tapped you in to His redemptive power.

____________________________________________________________

November 4, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

When I found this song this morning it spoke to my spirit that has been crying out for answers……I have, as the song says, been shut up, shut down, held out, held down, in ways I never knew…….but I can feel Your fullness in my life.

And God says…. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Isaiah 43:1-2 “But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm” Proverbs 1:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world! “John 16:33

These words mean the breaking and collapse of my independence brought about by my own hands, and the surrendering of my life to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. God may bring me up to this point three hundred and sixty-five times a year, but He cannot push me through it. It means breaking the hard outer layer of my individual independence from God, and the liberating of myself and my nature into oneness with Him; not following my own ideas, but choosing absolute loyalty to Jesus. Once I am at that point, there is no possibility of misunderstanding. Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ or understand what He meant when He said, “. . . for My sake” (Matthew 5:11). That is what makes a strong saint.

Has that breaking of my independence come? All the rest is religious fraud. The one point to decide is— will I give up? Will I surrender to Jesus Christ, placing no conditions whatsoever as to how the brokenness will come? I must be broken from my own understanding of myself. When I reach that point, immediately the reality of the supernatural identification with Jesus Christ takes place. And the witness of the Spirit of God is unmistakable— “I have been crucified with Christ . . . .”

The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away my own rights and becoming a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Until I do that, I will not begin to be a saint.

One student a year who hears God’s call would be sufficient for God to have called the Bible Training College into existence. This college has no value as an organization, not even academically. Its sole value for existence is for God to help Himself to lives. Will we allow Him to help Himself to us, or are we more concerned with our own ideas of what we are going to be?

______________________________________________________

November 3, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Sometimes in my desperation to find answers and solutions for the issues I confront daily, I forget the one single event that provides all the answers; the cross. Sometimes when I find myself searching for God’s brilliant and timely rescue I overlook the fact that He provided all the answers at the cross in Jesus Christ. Dear God, please help me to look to the cross of Jesus for all my answers.

And God says…”When I said I am the way, the truth and the light, I was responding to all questions. Trust in Me with all your heart and do not rely on your own way of thinking and I will make all your paths straight. Whatever the question, look to Me. I will always provide the lamp for your feet……..and the faith that is required for our relationship will light your path a step at a time’’.

Our Lord never insists obedience. He stresses very definitely what we ought to do, but He never forces us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him. That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an “If,” meaning, “You do not need to do this unless you desire to do so.” “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself . . .” (Luke 9:23). In other words, “To be My disciple, let him give up his right to himself to Me.” Our Lord is not talking about our eternal position, but about our being of value to Him in this life here and now. That is why He sounds so stern (see Luke 14:26). Never try to make sense from these words by separating them from the One who spoke them.

The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself. Jesus Christ will not force me to obey Him, but I must. And as soon as I obey Him, I fulfill my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant. But if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. Then, when I stand face to face with God, I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When God’s redemption brings a human soul to the point of obedience, it always produces. If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.

___________________________________________________________

November 2, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I sometimes wonder where God is when I need to be near Him. I call out and He does not answer me. Where is He? What has happened? And then I realize that He is holding me in His arms and there is no need for dialog.

And God says…”Seek and you will find, I am with you always, nothing can separate you from my love. Sometimes I do not respond to your cries for help because I know just how safe you really are, and I am allowing you to come to learn it as well.”

……A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”   They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!” Mark 4:37-41

There is no such thing as a private life, or a place to hide in this world, for a man or woman who is intimately aware of and shares in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. God divides the private life of His saints and makes it a highway for the world on one hand and for Himself on the other. No human being can stand that unless he is identified with Jesus Christ. We are not sanctified for ourselves. We are called into intimacy with the gospel, and things happen that appear to have nothing to do with us. But God is getting us into fellowship with Himself. Let Him have His way. If you refuse, you will be of no value to God in His redemptive work in the world, but will be a hindrance and a stumbling block.

The first thing God does is get us grounded on strong reality and truth. He does this until our cares for ourselves individually have been brought into submission to His way for the purpose of His redemption. Why shouldn’t we experience heartbreak? Through those doorways God is opening up ways of fellowship with His Son. Most of us collapse at the first grip of pain. We sit down at the door of God’s purpose and enter a slow death through self-pity. And all the so-called Christian sympathy of others helps us to our deathbed. But God will not. He comes with the grip of the pierced hand of His Son, as if to say, “Enter into fellowship with Me; arise and shine.” If God can accomplish His purposes in this world through a broken heart, then why not thank Him for breaking yours?

__________________________________________________________

November 1, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I do not know exactly why we must be broken over and over until we are conformed into the likleness of Jesus. However, I do know that the pattern of being broken can become familiar to the point that we know God is shaping us, and we begin to understand that He brings the courage ,strength and patience essential to the change.

And God says…”When you open your heart to Me and ask Me to come in and live with you, there is a fair amount of “housecleaning” that needs to be accomplished. Your self reliance, notions about pleasure and pain and self must be eliminated. The Holy Spirit within you can and will grow and consume you from the inside out as your natural state is broken and discarded.”

“Seek first the Kingdome of God…..Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways….and remember a broken and contrite heart I will not ignore”

The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy for us. Yet the New Testament view is that He took our sin on Himself not because of sympathy, but because of His identification with us. He was “made. . . to be sin. . . .” Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the only explanation for His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy for us. We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, nor because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and for no other reason. We say that Jesus Christ came to reveal the fatherhood and the lovingkindness of God, but the New Testament says that He came to take “away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). And the revealing of the fatherhood of God is only to those to whom Jesus has been introduced as Savior. In speaking to the world, Jesus Christ never referred to Himself as One who revealed the Father, but He spoke instead of being a stumbling block (see John 15:22-24). John 14:9  , where Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” was spoken to His disciples.

That Christ died for me, and therefore I am completely free from penalty, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15)— not, “He died my death”— and that through identification with His death I can be freed from sin, and have His very righteousness imparted as a gift to me. The substitution which is taught in the New Testament is twofold— “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The teaching is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me (seeGalatians 4:19).

_________________________________________________________________

October 29, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Father God, I sometimes wonder how far I can test your mercy and grace. Just when I think I am on the “straight and narrow” I fall by the way ….again. I pray you will continue to change me from the inside out and I pray your mercy and grace will continue to cover my ever wondering head and heart.

And God says…”Review my promises to you from Romans…..

 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:

 They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.

We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.

None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” Romans 8:38-39 (The Message)