On A More Serious Note

Sometimes life is hard and these past several months, for various reasons, have been a definite testing period in our lives and we still have many prayers that in our simple minds seem unanswered. However God is good and we know that we are being grown even if we can't tell just how quite yet. I read the following excerpt in my quiet time this morning and it was a great reminder to be patient and keep things in a Christ like perspective...I hope it encourages and reminds you as well!

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God is committed to my dying every day, and He calls me to that same commitment. He insists that every hour be my dying hour, and He wants my death on the cross to be as central to my own life story as is Christ's death to the gospel story. "Let this same attitude be in you," He says, "which was also in Christ Jesus...who became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." (Phil 2: 5-8)

I should expect every day to encounter circumstantial evidence of God's commitment to my dying; and I must seize upon every God-given opportunity to be conformed more fully to Christ's death, no matter the pain involved.

When my flesh yearns for some prohibited thing, I must die. When called to do something I don't want to do, I must die. When I wish to be selfish and serve no one, I must die. When wanting to cling to wrongs done against me, I must die. When enticed by allurements of the world, I must die. When wishing to keep besetting sins secret, I must die. When wants that are borderline needs are left unmet, I must die. When dreams that are good seem shoved aside, I must die.

"Not My will, but Yours be done," Christ trustingly prayed on the eve of His crucifixion (Luke 22:42); and preaching His story to myself each day puts me in a frame of mind to trust God and embrace the cross of my own dying also.

~ "A Gospel Primer" by Milton Vincent.