A boxer in training is taught how to take a punch, as well as how to give one. In learning how to take it, it is not so lethal. In God, we learn how to take life’s punches.
Philippians 2:5-9 “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus…… made Himself of no reputation…..He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name above every name.”
Scripture teaches us to “LET this mind be in you”. To LET implies I have a choice. If I make the wrong choice, I can stop it. It is my responsibility before God “to let”, to submit my will to His, to yield, and in the yielding Christ’s resurrection life flows through me. Most of us have a problem in submitting, in letting, at times. Just as the boxer learns how to take a punch to reduce the impact of the blow, as we submit (let), life becomes sweeter. Yielding reduces the bitterness of resistance and Jesus becomes more real to me. We can become letters, (let-ers) on two legs, “a living epistle, known and read of all men”, (2 Corinthians 3:2).
LET GO…..AND LET GOD…..
YIELDING DESTROYS THE IMPETUS OF COMPULSION….Selah.
As I yield and let go, I abandon to the Lord the control of my life that I have hung on to, clung to in misguided pride and stubbornness…..the right to myself……self rule instead of a Christ ruled heart. “Let this mind be in you….” the mind of Christ. Here I discover the benefits of trusting the Lord instead of “the filthy rags” of my self righteousness.
If God could get one person wholly committed to Him, that person would be of more value to God than a hundred others declaring truths that their lives did not measure up to.
What about me? Is my daily life a demonstration of the truths revealed to me, that I declare, preach, share with others? Or can it be sadly said of me, “I don’t hear what you say for the noise of what you are”? Inconsistent. “Let this mind be in you…..”
When I have an inner witness to a truth God is revealing to me in a moment of His anointing, it is the anointing ON. That precedes the work IN me in order for that truth to become mine. No amount of talking about it, preaching it to others will make it mine, a yielding in a real life situation that God will orchestrate, makes it mine when I put it into practice. I am faced with the unreality in me, that my actions do not tally with the truths I declare. “Buy the truth and sell it not”, Proverbs 23:23. Truth has a counter, revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, (He will show us where or who), and a price tag, humility. As I embrace the truth of what I am, or am not, bow in humility to the Lord, yield to His will, surrendering mine, truth turns the tap of Christ’s divine life and grace on and I discover the sweetness of His life flowing through me…..all for His glory! I can acquire a taste for the truth because of it’s abundant benefits – another measure of the stature of God’s beautiful Son in me. As the line of the song goes: “Nothing compares with the promise I have in You”. My choices in life make His promises a reality to me and I discover that Jesus is the joy of my life.
Does the way I live my life contradict the truths I declare I believe? God’s truths are born in glory, (in His anointing), but grow in gloom. Only the Spirit of God can guide us and sustain us in the dark times. As I yield to the Holy Spirit’s workings with me, I become a living demonstration, (an epistle, a letter to be read of all men), bringing God’s truths to a reality in me and back to glory – His! “Thine is the kingdom, Thine is the power, and Thine is the glory”!
Salvation and sanctification are God’s work of His sovereign grace. God’s best for us is to be pressed out of measure, the measure of ourselves and into Christ. Our responsibility is to live our lives, daily yielding to Him in circumstances and relationships, little by little, line upon line, till we are wholly abandoned and committed to Him and His purposes. Our decrease makes room for His increase. Only in this place will we have abandoned measure and discover the fullness of Christ’s triumphant life.
