{"id":15501,"date":"2017-04-24T08:47:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T12:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15501"},"modified":"2017-04-24T09:54:11","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T13:54:11","slug":"the-warning-against-desiring-spiritual-success-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=15501","title":{"rendered":"The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ECSs6qvI87o\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you\u2026 \u2014Luke 10:20<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live. Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go \u201coutside the camp, bearing His reproach\u201d (Hebrews 13:13). In Luke 10:20, Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice. We have a commercialized view\u2014 we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God\u2019s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God\u2019s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others\u2019 lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God\u2019s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.<\/p>\n<p>Unless the worker lives a life that \u201cis hidden with Christ in God\u201d (Colossians 3:3), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an \u201cif,\u201d never with the forceful or dogmatic statement\u2014 \u201cYou must.\u201d Discipleship carries with it an option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you\u2026 \u2014Luke 10:20 Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15501"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15504,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15501\/revisions\/15504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}