In our natural life our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him?”. . . till we all come . . . to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ . . .” (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian life should be. The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord.

In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him. Nothing ever diverted our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in others where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned our Lord even the slightest degree away from His purpose to go “up to Jerusalem.”

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happened to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our “Jerusalem.” There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going “up to [our] Jerusalem.”

“. . . there they crucified Him . . .” (Luke 23:33). That is what happened when our Lord reached Jerusalem, and that event is the doorway to our salvation. The saints, however, do not end in crucifixion; by the Lord’s grace they end in glory. In the meantime our watchword should be summed up by each of us saying, “I too go ’up to Jerusalem.’ “

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September 23, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I sense freedom and at the same time I am a little apprehensive about letting go of all my preconceived ideas about spirituality and religion and simply focusing on Jesus.

And God says…”He is the way the truth and the light. Regardless of the question, He is the answer. He is the answer to your all your questions. How you shall live, grow, stand against adversity, and how you shall love and worship Me. You are not to wonder what happens next or how to deal with this trial or that burden. Jesus came to give you life and life more abundantly He came as your victorious Shepherd. He is victorious, and so are you when He lives through you. Stay connected to Jesus and everything else falls into place; your life, ministry, family, work, and future are in Jesus.”

DJR Journal 9 23 10

This familiar quote from Jim Elliott came to our mind today.

And we would add from what we have been learning … that it is only available thru connection with Jesus.    And we also saw in today’s lesson the value of a clear mission … to keep us on track in times of temptation to react to the ups and downs of daily existence.   This is parallel to the business world where a clear mission/vision will assist us in decision making.   Jesus had this clear mission and stayed true to it.   Same with us,  in life and business,  It is the “overspray” of staying true to mission that generates fruit and good works,  almost as a “by product” rather than something that we strive for and measure.    That’s what the Pharisees did and they didn’t get good marks from Jesus.

The first thing that happens after we recognize our election by God in Christ Jesus is the destruction of our preconceived ideas, our narrow-minded thinking, and all of our other allegiances— we are turned solely into servants of God’s own purpose. The entire human race was created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Sin has diverted the human race onto another course, but it has not altered God’s purpose to the slightest degree. And when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race, namely, that He created us for Himself. This realization of our election by God is the most joyful on earth, and we must learn to rely on this tremendous creative purpose of God. The first thing God will do is force the interests of the whole world through the channel of our hearts. The love of God, and even His very nature, is introduced into us. And we see the nature of Almighty God purely focused in

John 3:16

— “For God so loved the world. . . .”

We must continually keep our soul open to the fact of God’s creative purpose, and never confuse or cloud it with our own intentions. If we do, God will have to force our intentions aside no matter how much it may hurt. A missionary is created for the purpose of being God’s servant, one in whom God is glorified. Once we realize that it is through the salvation of Jesus Christ that we are made perfectly fit for the purpose of God, we will understand why Jesus Christ is so strict and relentless in His demands. He demands absolute righteousness from His servants, because He has put into them the very nature of God.

Beware lest you forget God’s purpose for your life

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September 21, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Once again I read Oswald Chambers and find I am lacking the strength and discipline to measure up; all the time. Oswald says that God demands the absolute righteousness of God from me because He has put the nature of God into me. So if I do not live like the absolute righteousness of God is in me all the time….what is wrong? Am I a believer; a weak believer, or simply a man without the strength or courage to demonstrate God living in me?

And God says…”You are weak, but I am strong. You cannot meet My demands for the righteousness of Jesus. However, Jesus can and does meet My demands for absolute righteousness, and you are covered with His righteousness as you allow Him to live through you. Do not focus on your own shortcomings or your inability to demonstrate Jesus all the time, instead focus on Jesus and you will never see your shortcomings, and neither will I.”

Our Lord’s exhortation to us in Matthew 5:38-48 is to be generous in our behavior toward everyone. Beware of living according to your natural affections in your spiritual life. Everyone has natural affections— some people we like and others we don’t like. Yet we must never let those likes and dislikes rule our Christian life. “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:7), even those toward whom we have no affection.

The example our Lord gave us here is not that of a good person, or even of a good Christian, but of God Himself. “. . . be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” In other words, simply show to the other person what God has shown to you. And God will give you plenty of real life opportunities to prove whether or not you are “perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Being a disciple means deliberately identifying yourself with God’s interests in other people. Jesus says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

The true expression of Christian character is not in good-doing, but in God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not just good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly. The secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural in him as a result of the grace of God, and the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, everyday details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God. And when we come in contact with things that create confusion and a flurry of activity, we find to our own amazement that we have the power to stay wonderfully poised even in the center of it all.

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September 20, 2010

Journal Entry for Today

Life can keep me all wrapped up in my own little world, focused and worried about my own concerns and those of the people I know and love. I can be so inwardly focused that I sometimes forget that God can only live and move through me when I am in His will; focused on Him and loving my neighbor.

And God says….”You are perfect as you allow Me to live through you reaching out to others. Jesus gave you but two commandments; love your God with all that you are and love your neighbor as yourself. When this is effortless and natural you are perfect as God is perfect, and this occurs when you are connected to Me and thereby connected and reaching out to others

Until we are born again, the only kind of temptation we understand is the kind mentioned in James 1:14, “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” But through regeneration we are lifted into another realm where there are other temptations to face, namely, the kind of temptations our Lord faced. The temptations of Jesus had no appeal to us as unbelievers because they were not at home in our human nature. Our Lord’s temptations and ours are in different realms until we are born again and become His brothers. The temptations of Jesus are not those of a mere man, but the temptations of God as Man. Through regeneration, the Son of God is formed in us (see Galatians 4:19), and in our physical life He has the same setting that He had on earth. Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things— he tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God. He does not come to us on the premise of tempting us to sin, but on the premise of shifting our point of view, and only the Spirit of God can detect this as a temptation of the devil.

Temptation means a test of the possessions held within the inner, spiritual part of our being by a power outside us and foreign to us. This makes the temptation of our Lord explainable. After Jesus’ baptism, having accepted His mission of being the One “who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) He “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Matthew 4:1) and into the testing devices of the devil. Yet He did not become weary or exhausted. He went through the temptation “without sin,” and He retained all the possessions of His spiritual nature completely intact.

The word temptation has come to mean something bad to us today, but we tend to use the word in the wrong way. Temptation itself is not sin; it is something we are bound to face simply by virtue of being human. Not to be tempted would mean that we were already so shameful that we would be beneath contempt. Yet many of us suffer from temptations we should never have to suffer, simply because we have refused to allow God to lift us to a higher level where we would face temptations of another kind.

A person’s inner nature, what he possesses in the inner, spiritual part of his being, determines what he is tempted by on the outside. The temptation fits the true nature of the person being tempted and reveals the possibilities of his nature. Every person actually determines or sets the level of his own temptation, because temptation will come to him in accordance with the level of his controlling, inner nature.

Temptation comes to me, suggesting a possible shortcut to the realization of my highest goal— it does not direct me toward what I understand to be evil, but toward what I understand to be good. Temptation is something that confuses me for a while, and I don’t know whether something is right or wrong. When I yield to it, I have made lust a god, and the temptation itself becomes the proof that it was only my own fear that prevented me from falling into the sin earlier.

Temptation is not something we can escape; in fact, it is essential to the well-rounded life of a person. Beware of thinking that you are tempted as no one else–what you go through is the common inheritance of the human race, not something that no one has ever before endured. God does not save us from temptations–He sustains us in the midst of them (see Hebrews 2:18 and Hebrews 4:15-16).

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September 17, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Sometimes when I read Oswald Chambers I feel so inadequate. He talks about temptation, and how it can be a good thing, but he does not talk about succumbing to temptation. He writes about the spiritual discipline we need to grow, but he leaves out the “how.” He often talks about how we must serve others, and I find myself just serving myself. He seems to set the bar pretty high for me sometimes.

His devotionals often make me feel “less than”, much like the sermons I grew up hearing. Back then I just gave up and quit trying to be a Christian. If I couldn’t keep all the rules and maintain discipline over my thoughts and behavior then it must not be for me. Maybe all this “stuff” was and is for people that can be disciplined and “good”.

And God says…” No one is good. I don’t grade on the curve. My standards are 100% holiness all the time. You cannot reach that goal regardless of your discipline. You cannot change yourself into the man you need to become……regardless of your study, discipline or self control. You cannot even get a little better.

You can become “good enough” when you let Jesus live through you. You are “good enough” when you allow Jesus to provide 100% of the holiness I require. Does this mean you give up living a “good life”, trying to be a “good person”? Not necessarily. But it does mean that the “good life” you live is a life lived by Jesus through you, and the changes that become a part of your life are brought about by Jesus.

You can “give up” trying to live right and simply allow Jesus to live right through you

The primary thought in the area of religion is— keep your eyes on God, not on people. Your motivation should not be the desire to be known as a praying person. Find an inner room in which to pray where no one even knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret. Have no motivation other than to know your Father in heaven. It is impossible to carry on your life as a disciple without definite times of secret prayer.

“When you pray, do not use vain repetitions . . .” (Matthew 6:7). God does not hear us because we pray earnestly— He hears us solely on the basis of redemption. God is never impressed by our earnestness. Prayer is not simply getting things from God— that is only the most elementary kind of prayer. Prayer is coming into perfect fellowship and oneness with God. If the Son of God has been formed in us through regeneration (see Galatians 4:19), then He will continue to press on beyond our common sense and will change our attitude about the things for which we pray.

“Everyone who asks receives . . .” (Matthew 7:8). We pray religious nonsense without even involving our will, and then we say that God did not answer— but in reality we have never asked for anything. Jesus said, “. . . you will ask what you desire. . .” (John 15:7). Asking means that our will must be involved. Whenever Jesus talked about prayer, He spoke with wonderful childlike simplicity. Then we respond with our critical attitude, saying, “Yes, but even Jesus said that we must ask.” But remember that we have to ask things of God that are in keeping with the God whom Jesus Christ revealed.

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September 16, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I wonder what happened to those “immediate answers” that used to show up  instantaneously (or so it seemed). When I was a very young Christian and believed that God was my cosmic bellhop, it seemed that He delivered on all of my prayers as soon as I offered them up. Nowadays it seems like He takes longer and longer.

And God says…”As you seek more and more of Me, and you seek to become more like Jesus I use patience and time to shape and mold you. You have become more focused on others as you are being transformed. You will also notice that more and more you are seeking Me and not just what I can deliver for you. You are now starting to understand that real peace and joy does not come from delivering things to you or delivering you from circumstances. Real joy and peace comes from being connected to Me and your prayers are the means by which we are joined.”

Have you “renounced the hidden things of shame” in your life—the things that your sense of honor or pride will not allow to come into the light? You can easily hide them. Is there a thought in your heart about anyone that you would not like to be brought into the light? Then renounce it as soon as it comes to mind—renounce everything in its entirety until there is no hidden dishonesty or craftiness about you at all. Envy, jealousy, and strife don’t necessarily arise from your old nature of sin, but from the flesh which was used for these kinds of things in the past (see Romans 6:19 and 1 Peter 4:1-3). You must maintain continual watchfulness so that nothing arises in your life that would cause you shame.

“. . . not walking in craftiness. . .” (2 Corinthians 4:2). This means not resorting to something simply to make your own point. This is a terrible trap. You know that God will allow you to work in only one way—the way of truth. Then be careful never to catch people through the other way—the way of deceit. If you act deceitfully, God’s blight and ruin will be upon you. What may be craftiness for you, may not be for others—God has called you to a higher standard. Never dull your sense of being your utmost for His highest—your best for His glory. For you, doing certain things would mean craftiness coming into your life for a purpose other than what is the highest and best, and it would dull the motivation that God has given you. Many people have turned back because they are afraid to look at things from God’s perspective. The greatest spiritual crisis comes when a person has to move a little farther on in his faith than the beliefs he has already accepted

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September 15, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Somewhere, sometime, a transformation began to take place. In the past my mind would start spinning and spinning, trying to find my own answers and solutions. I have the experience and I am good at solving problems so in the past I would rush out and grab hold and hang on. But somewhere and somehow this changed.

And God says…”When you asked Me to change you from the inside out, I began. I continue as long as you allow Me to lead, guide and direct your life. Sometimes you lose sight of Jesus, and inside your old nature become frightened and take your life back. When you do this I allow you to take your control back. When you focus on Jesus and give Me the control, I continue to give you peace that passes understanding as I change the circumstance, or you. Seek Me first and all things are added unto you.”

True surrender is not simply surrender of our external life but surrender of our will— and once that is done, surrender is complete. The greatest crisis we ever face is the surrender of our will. Yet God never forces a person’s will into surrender, and He never begs. He patiently waits until that person willingly yields to Him. And once that battle has been fought, it never needs to be fought again.

Surrender for Deliverance. “Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest” ( Matthew 11:28 ). It is only after we have begun to experience what salvation really means that we surrender our will to Jesus for rest. Whatever is causing us a sense of uncertainty is actually a call to our will— “Come to Me.” And it is a voluntary coming.

Surrender for Devotion. “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself . . . ” (Matthew 16:24). The surrender here is of my self to Jesus, with His rest at the heart of my being. He says, “If you want to be My disciple, you must give up your right to yourself to Me.” And once this is done, the remainder of your life will exhibit nothing but the evidence of this surrender, and you never need to be concerned again with what the future may hold for you. Whatever your circumstances may be, Jesus is totally sufficient (see 2 Corinthians 12:9 and (Philippians 4:19).

Surrender for Death. “. . . another will gird you . . .” (John 21:18 ; also see John21:19 ). Have you learned what it means to be girded for death? Beware of some surrender that you make to God in an ecstatic moment in your life, because you are apt to take it back again. True surrender is a matter of being “united together [with Jesus] in the likeness of His death” ( Romans 6:5 ) until nothing ever appeals to you that did not appeal to Him.

And after you surrender— then what? Your entire life should be characterized by an eagerness to maintain unbroken fellowship and oneness with God.

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September 13, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

How do I know if I have surrendered all when I still doubt and am afraid that God will not meet me at the point of my needs? I have asked God to take all of me, and change me from the inside out, but how can I really know that He has consumed me from the inside out when I still have doubts?

And God says…”You will always have doubts when you take your eyes off of Jesus. You are human and full of human frailty. You keep waiting on changes within you and it is not you that changes, it is you that diminishes. This does not mean that you are less likely to be your old self, it means that when you are focused on Jesus you cannot be you old self……but take your eyes off of Him and you are like Peter sinking.”

“Focus on Jesus, worship and give your day to Me, and tell Me then if you have any doubts. It is not possible. Knock and the door shall be opened, seek and you shall find. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desire of your heart.”