Running With The Devil

Yes Lord!

Scripture Galatians 2 :

 ¹⁷“If, while we seek to be justified in Christ, it becomes evident that we ourselves are sinners, does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Absolutely not! ¹⁸If I rebuild what I destroyed, I prove that I am a lawbreaker. ¹⁹For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. ²⁰I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”^d]”>[d]

Observation

You can’t serve the Lord while you live like the devil.

 

Application

I remember talking to an evangelist about this once, and it was a question of whether once we are saved if we are eternally secure, basically it was the “once saved always saved question.”  As we spoke about it, he became my teacher and he said, “Well can you serve the Lord while you live like the devil?”  After I thought about that I understood what he was saying and had to answer, “well no.” 

 

The Lord may still use what a sinner is doing for accomplishing His will, but that sinner is not truly “serving” God.  Anyone who is living a life of willful sin is serving themselves and not God.

 

I think this is what Paul was getting at when he identified so closely with Christ that he said, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  Paul had given up his whole being to serve Christ.  He had so surrendered his own comforts and pleasures that he said, its not me anymore, its all Christ.  What a powerful lesson this is for us today.

 

If we could just gain a portion of the surrender that Paul showed here, what an impact we could make on the modern day Church.  If we can just turn over our lives, our comforts, our efforts, our prayers, our hopes and give them to God – we would be able to smash the influence of the world around us, deny the sinfulness thereof and truly live as Christ body in this world. 

 

Prayer

 

Abba,

 

  Grant me a surrendered heart – help me to put to death the old parts of myself that do not serve your purposes.

 

Love Michael 

 

Yieldedness

I surrender my comfort, my pleasures, my sorrow, my pain, my sickness, my weakness, my sin.   I lay them down before you oh God!