MISSIONS UPDATE: Yesterday the Missions team finished up their activities in Dominica. Mission complete. They head back this morning. Let’s pray for their travels today, and thank you for your prayers during the Missions trip.
Let’s get into the Word.
This morning we continue our series entitled, “Refined Focus”, by continuing with our new mini-series entitled, “Focusing on Dying To Self”. As we close out the week we will take a look at the words of Jesus in Mark 8 one more time. Jesus said: “Any of you who want to be my follower must stop thinking about yourself and what you want. You must be willing to carry the cross that is given to you for following me. Any of you who try to save the life you have will lose it. But you who give up your life for me and for the Good News will save it.” (Mark 8:34,35 ERV).
I keep thinking about this passage when I think about my life and the life of my wife. While we are most certainly far from perfect, I can say without any reservation that we are pursuing the life God wants for us to live. We don’t want anything but the life God planned. We don’t want any more, nor any less, than God’s will. As I think about some of the ventures God has us on, all I can do is thank Him for His goodness and be grateful for the fact that Isabella and I had the courage to die to our desires in order to accept, embrace and pursue God’s desires. This is a day of introspection for me and I pray it will be for you as well.
So what does this mean to you today? A few things.
- It takes courage to give up your desires for God’s desires, because in most cases God won’t even reveal His desires until you die to your own.
- If you have the courage to die to self and to completely yield to God, God will lead you down a journey that far exceeds your wildest imaginations.
- The day you stop pursuing selfish desires will be the day God opens the door to the “God-sized projects” He planned for you from the foundations of the world.
- God won’t fully reveal His plan until you are far down the road towards completing it. That’s why you must get started. Launch out in faith, before you have all the answers, and you will discover the fact that God will reveal the answers as you go.
- Test God. If there is something in your heart you believe God has called you to do, and you have been talking about it for a long time, but you have not started, make a decision to start today. You can’t wait until you have all the answers, because God does not work that way. If you had all the answers you would not need faith. Decide today. Get started. Launch out. Stop just talking about it and do something. Test God. You owe to it yourself to launch out into God-sized projects in order to experience God’s power.
- You can go to church all your life, you can read your Bible every day, but if you never ATTEMPT anything your learning will never turn into living! The Bible is not designed to be a textbook to study, but rather a life-book to live! Start LIVING it today!
Closing Confession: Father, this is a season of refined focus for me. I bring my life into focus in 2016 by dying to self and truly living for You. I make a decision today, to LAUNCH OUT in faith for the things You have planted in my heart. I have had plenty of time to analyze, theorize, hypothesize and strategize. Now it’s time to DO something. My learning will turn into living. My education will turn into application. I launch out, before I have all the answers, and I trust that You will give me the answers as I go. I have spent years building up head-knowledge about You. Now it’s time to experience what I have been reading about. I will launch out Father, into God-sized projects, believing You will do more with me, once I get started! Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper.
