And he who does not take his cross
and follow after Me is not worthy of Me
Matthew 10:38
We've established the fact that Christ died
for our sins, so now what? Do we ignore
that fact? Do we continue on with
our lives as if no price was paid?
That verse is telling us to take up
our cross and follow christ,
burdens and all, turn and follow HIM.
To not be afraid of persecution,
in fact the disciples rejoiced in
being persecuted. They never even
considered themselves worthy enough to suffer
for Christ. Here is a question for you
Would you die for Christ?
would you die for what you believe in?
Is your faith so small that if someone threatened
you with death unless you denied Christ that
you would deny Him? before you say..
"I would never deny Christ!"
Remember that Peter denied Him not once,
but three times. Peter saw Christ, he heard Christ,
touched Christ, lived with Christ and he still denied
him. Of course Peter got the chance to redeem
himself as he spoke with the resurrected Christ,
and said he loved him three times, Peter also
died as a martyr, and he was crucified upside down.
So obviously in the end Peter died for Christ
What I'm getting at is this, Our faith...our love for
Christ should never be compromised. We should
never be afraid to stand for Him, speak for him...
LIVE for him! for we don't live for ourselves,
we live for CHRIST!
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
and I know at times it can be hard,
and I'm not even including the times
we are around other people. Some
of the hardest times is just when we
are alone with ourselves struggling
in our own sins, with our fleshly desires
and our corrupted ways. We try so hard to
stand for God, to live and be like Christ
only to fail, like Paul said
"For what I am doing, I do not understand.
For what I will to do, that I do not practice;
but what I hate, that I do."
Romans 7:15
In a place of desperation and self-hate
of our selves (which is nothing but sin)
is exactly where satan wants you. He wants
you to fall down, and he wants you to keep YOURSELF
there! He wants you to deny the power of Christ's
sacrifice!
Don't get it twisted, I'm not
saying we shouldn't care if and when we sin,
what I'm saying is Christ died for your SINS!
Don't wallow in pity and in your shame
and cry woe is me! stand up out of your failures!
MAKE WAR against your sins! continue fighting
and striving to be better, to live for Christ!
We were freed from the chains of sin,
are we perfect? No...
We are always battling with our selves
because our nature is to.. SIN
GIVING UP IS FAILURE,
letting your sins control you is failure,
NOT SEEKING GOD and REPENTING
IS FAILURE.
For if you say
"God can't forgive what I've done,"
and you turn away from God,
because you don't think he can forgive
Then you are LOST, and you are denying
the power of GOD and you are denying
the forgiveness and the price that was PAID
on that CROSS!
"Growth in grace is measured not by the fact
that you have not gone back, but that you
have an insight into where you are spiritually;
you have heard God say "come up higher"
not to you personally,
but to the insight of your character."
My Utmost for His highest(Oswald Chambers)
March 27th
Sin can be damaging, I'm not denying that,
and I'm not denying the fact that sin is wrong.
If we don't give it to Christ, and ask forgiveness
if we don't attempt to turn from them, if we don't
put up a fight, then we become harden to sin
and we won't recognize what we are doing is
wrong anymore, until it is to late.
athletes exercise their bodies to gain strength
and endurance for game time, so they are ready
for anything that may happen.
If we don't exercise our "soul's", if we don't
seek God more, yearn to read and understand his word
then we will never be ready to make war, and our sins
will become failures that will consume us from the inside.
