In Love With God - lesson 9

In Love With God - lesson 9

     And the hand of the Lord was strong on me. - Ezekiel 3:14

     Does this not stir up your heart today? Just think about what  it means to have the hand of the Lord upon you. If your wondering about how close and personal your own relationship with the Lord can be, this is a powerful illustration of what you can have.

     Then the Spirit lifted me up. - Ezekiel 3:12

     How much we are in need of this! That the Holy Spirit would lift us up and the hand of the Lord would be upon us that we might be in close fellowship with our Creator! Look up! See His face! Oh how He will give you overcoming victory to raise you out of the snares and pitfalls of this life and give you a brand new one full of the character and honor of His own noble nature! Will we not have His noble nature stamped into us? Will we not have the character of His love, compassion and purity etched deep into our lives? This is what we are praying for! This is what we are desiring! To be noble like Jesus and to be a servant of all just as He is.

     Our work

     Now comes the job. Raising up the battle cry to wake up everyone around us to turn back to the Lord with all our heart. Why would God not judge us if even we don’t want holiness and righteousness? At least the world around us has an excuse because they never had the Lord before. The corruption in our society is actually beyond measure so that judgement must come. But if those who should be standing up and holding the line of holiness are instead full of the love of all worldliness, then who is left to hold the line? Christians are hostages to their sinful desires. The trouble with this kind of a hostage situation is that we don’t want to be rescued and rather than standing up to fight for the Lord we stand up and fight against the Lord’s men who came to help rescue us! It’s like going to a prison camp, fighting off the guards, throwing open the cell doors, and then having the prisoners come out and fight with you and purposefully close their cell doors back up again and even try to prevent any other prisoners who might have had a desire to escape, from getting out either. The captives have joined with their captors. This is the bondage that holds back all Christians from serving the Lord. The love of sin. 

     This is why we need to seek the Lord so earnestly!  What sins are holding us back from standing up for the Lord? What bondage are we in today that is causing our mouths to be silent? It is impossible to have any affect against sin with our words if we are secretly still living in that same sin. We are like the prisoners who do things for our guards that betray our fellow prisoners for the price of some earthly comfort. What is buying the silence of our tongue and the betrayal of our fellow prisoners even right now as we read this? What makes you silent? These are the things to be praying about in our prayer times today. Will we stand against our own weaknesses today for the sake of being part of the Lord’s army? Will we call upon Him that His Holy Spirit will lift us up today? Let us ask ourselves these questions and know that if we are earnest, God will raise us up!

     Now flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s bond servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. 

                              2 Timothy 2:22-26 (NASB)

      -Seth

In Love With God - lesson 2

In Love With God - lesson 2

The only thing that I want for this semester

is for us to be in love with and on fire for God

                Which means Surrender, Surrender, Surrender!

     We can’t do anything about what anyone else does in response to the call of making the Lord first in their lives, but we can do something about what we do. We can say, “Yes Lord, here I am. I want to be with you all the time and enter into Your Presence and be a blessing to Your heart.”

               Honesty in our hearts toward the Lord

     This is what the Lord requires. When we turn to Him right now, He requires that we mean whatever we say, with all our heart.

      “Go and proclaim these words toward the north and say, ‘Return faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord; I will not look upon you in anger. For I am gracious, declares the Lord; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against the Lord your God.” - Jeremiah 3:12-13

     God is always desiring us to simply turn from our sin and acknowledge that we have sinned and don’t want to anymore.

     “Then I will give you new shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.” - Jeremiah 3:15 “How I would set you among My sons, and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of the nations! And I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, and not turn away from following Me.” - Jeremiah 3:19

     This is our new life in Christ. This is God’s heart toward us! Why do we drag our feet instead of running at full speed into His arms? All that hinders us, He promises to forgive and all He has prepared for us, He has desired to give to us. We are not making Him give us His wonderful promises. He has desired to bestow them and it has been we who have not wanted them with all our heart. Instead, we have continually looked back at old things and held onto them and in doing so, robbed ourselves of the joys and blessings of being a Christian.

     So we must ask ourselves, how long will we wait? It is no one else who misses out. It is each of us personally. How long will I wait? How long will I drag my feet in my old life? Every bit of time that goes by is real and we don’t get it back. How long will I miss out on being on fire for the Lord? How Long will I miss out on the fullness of joy that comes from complete surrender to Him?

     What is my hindrance? What holds me back? These are the questions that we must ask ourselves and take hold of because it is me that loses if I don’t take hold of the Lord with all my heart.