Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
What of Today’s Verse…
God is in our lives. He is at work right now, undoing Satan’s destructive messes and leading us to places he wants us to go. This is true in everything we do and everywhere we go. The key is for us to seek his purpose, to live his will. If that is our goal, then we can be sure our God is with us every step of our way.
Let us Pray:
Thank you, God, for being at work in my life. Thank you for not leaving me alone to my best effort, insight, and choice. Thank you for having a plan for me and being the assurance that I can’t mess that plan up if I seek your will. Thank you for being my God, my Father, and my Partner through all of life. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
Words of Wisdom
The Delight Of Sacrifice…
“I will very gladly spend and be spent for you;” 2 Corinthians 12:15
When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ’s interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ.
The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only – that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life.
Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a “door-mat” without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things which emancipate us spiritually.
That was not Paul’s motive. “I could wish my self were accursed from Christ for my brethren” – wild, extravagant – is it? When a man is in love it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ.
