Psalm 42:1-2

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?"

This verse in Psalms has always brought me back to "Do I desire God like this?" Do I thirst for Christ? Does my soul pant for Jesus? Am I asking when can I go and meet with you Lord?

If I do not desire Jesus like this, am I truly seeking and following Him? Am I truly living life to its fullest extent and living my life the way God intended me to?

Reflect. If you want to live life to the full (John 10:10) then your soul should pant and thirst for Jesus Christ.

Love One Another

1 John 2:9 says, "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light."

God created all of us. Every single one of us was created by the same God. Every Christian, Muslim, drug addict, liar, homosexual, any label you can think of, some labels might even overlap. In 1 John 2:9 brother refers to everyone we are all brother's and sister created by the same God. No matter how far a brother or sister strays from the path or way of the Lord, we are called to love them unconditionally. The closer we are to the Lord the less we judge, stereotype, generalize, assume, and hold grudges instead we accept, forgive, listen, comfort, and love. The more we live into the light the more our love shines through our actions and the more we put others needs before our own.

Prayer

When you pray go somewhere quiet, alone, solitary
Pray that you will not fall into temptation
Withdraw from everything of this world
Pray that God's will be done not your own
Pray earnestly with undivided focus
Separate yourself from everything except for the Lord
Even if everyone is looking for you,
You must go away and pray
Pray privately
Pray for others
Praise your Creator and Savior
Pray for the day at hand
Pray for protection from Satan's evil plots
Pray that HIS kingdom will come
Pray for the fullness of grace
Pray to become more and more like Christ
Do this each and every day

Love One Another

Love is an indefinite thing to most of us; we don’t know what we mean when we talk about love. Love is the loftiest preference of one person for another, and spiritually Jesus demands that this sovereign preference be for Himself (see Luke 14:26 ). Initially, when “the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” ( Romans 5:5 ), it is easy to put Jesus first. But then we must practice the things mentioned in 2 Peter 1 to see them worked out in our lives.

The first thing God does is forcibly remove any insincerity, pride, and vanity from my life. And the Holy Spirit reveals to me that God loved me not because I was lovable, but because it was His nature to do so. Now He commands me to show the same love to others by saying, “. . . love one another as I have loved you” ( John 15:12 ). He is saying, “I will bring a number of people around you whom you cannot respect, but you must exhibit My love to them, just as I have exhibited it to you.” This kind of love is not a patronizing love for the unlovable— it is His love, and it will not be evidenced in us overnight. Some of us may have tried to force it, but we were soon tired and frustrated.

“The Lord . . . is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish . . .” ( 2 Peter 3:9 ). I should look within and remember how wonderfully He has dealt with me. The knowledge that God has loved me beyond all limits will compel me to go into the world to love others in the same way. I may get irritated because I have to live with an unusually difficult person. But just think how disagreeable I have been with God! Am I prepared to be identified so closely with the Lord Jesus that His life and His sweetness will be continually poured out through Me? Neither natural love nor God’s divine love will remain and grow in me unless it is nurtured. Love is spontaneous, but it has to be maintained through discipline.

- Oswald Chambers

www.utmost.org

The Warning Against Desiring Spiritual Success

Worldliness is not the trap that most endangers us as Christian workers; nor is it sin. The trap we fall into is extravagantly desiring spiritual success; that is, success measured by, and patterned after, the form set by this religious age in which we now live. Never seek after anything other than the approval of God, and always be willing to go “outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13 ). In Luke 10:20 , Jesus told the disciples not to rejoice in successful service, and yet this seems to be the one thing in which most of us do rejoice. We have a commercialized view— we count how many souls have been saved and sanctified, we thank God, and then we think everything is all right. Yet our work only begins where God’s grace has laid the foundation. Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace, and our work as His disciples is to disciple others’ lives until they are totally yielded to God. One life totally devoted to God is of more value to Him than one hundred lives which have been simply awakened by His Spirit. As workers for God, we must reproduce our own kind spiritually, and those lives will be God’s testimony to us as His workers. God brings us up to a standard of life through His grace, and we are responsible for reproducing that same standard in others.

Unless the worker lives a life that “is hidden with Christ in God” ( Colossians 3:3 ), he is apt to become an irritating dictator to others, instead of an active, living disciple. Many of us are dictators, dictating our desires to individuals and to groups. But Jesus never dictates to us in that way. Whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He always prefaced His words with an “if,” never with the forceful or dogmatic statement— “You must.” Discipleship carries with it an option.

-Oswald Chambers

http://www.utmost.org/