The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with his love, He will rejoice over you with singing. ZEPHANAIH 3;;17 NIV. March 11 PLAN A VS. PLAN B Proverbs 3:5, 6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Untold numbers of Christians are spiritually unaware and defeated in their daily lives. They dont realize that there is a battle going on for their minds. When struggling believers perceive the nature of the conflict and realize that they can be transformed by the renewing of their minds, they will experience freedom. Faith is Gods way to live and reason is mans way, but faith and mans ability to rationalize are often in conflict. Its not that faith is unreasonable, nor am I suggesting that you ignore your responsibility to think. On the contrary, we are required by God to think and choose. God is a rational God and He does work through our ability to reason. The problem is that our ability to reason is limited. The Lord said: As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). We are incapable of determining Gods thoughts through human reasoning, therefore we are dependent on divine revelation. So we can live Gods way: operating by faith, which I like to call Plan A. Or we can live our way: operating by our limited ability to reason, which is Plan B. Plan B is based on our tendency to rationalize, I dont see it Gods way or I dont believe it, so we do it our way. Solomon urged us always to live Gods way when he wrote: Do not lean on your own understanding (Plan B), but in all your ways acknowledge Him (Plan A)(Proverbs 3:5, 6). The strength of Plan A in your life is determined by your personal conviction that Gods way is always right and by how committed you are to obey Him. The strength of Plan B is determined by the amount of time and energy you invest in entertaining thoughts which are contrary to Gods Word. You may really know Gods way is best. But the moment you begin to entertain thoughts or ideas which are contrary to Gods Word, you have established Plan B as an escape route in case Plan A should fail. Is it rational to choose our way over Gods way? Prayer: Lord, I want to be done with self-centered, mediocre planning. I choose to submit my will to Your perfect way and trust You for the outcome. t Bob Hoekstra :: Day By Day By Grace :: March 11th Three Wrong Responses to the Holy Spirit You always resist the Holy Spirit…Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God…Do not quench the Spirit. (Acts 7:51; Ephesians 4:30; and 1 Thessalonians 5:19) It is the will of God that we walk in daily dependence upon the Holy Spirit. It is Gods desire that we seek Him for the fullness of the Spirits work in and through our lives. Three wrong responses that undermine the will of God in our lives are resisting, grieving, and quenching the Spirit of the Lord. When Stephen was on trial before the religious leaders of Israel, he preached a powerful sermon declaring the faithfulness of God toward His consistently unfaithful nation. He concluded his message with a pointed, radical, accurate evaluation. You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you (Acts 7:51). Here we are given the kind of attitudes that oppose the work of the Spirit. These people were stiffnecked. They were stubborn and self-willed. They wanted their will, not the will of God. They also were uncircumcised in heart and ears. They did not allow God to cut away the carnality of their inner being. They would not allow God to speak to them through His messengers. They were self-righteous and self-sufficient. When we conduct ourselves in this same manner, we also are resist[ing] the Holy Spirit. When Paul was writing to the church at Ephesus, he commanded them: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. In the next verse he indicated the dispositions that bring grief to the Spirit of God. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice (Ephesians 4:31). Yes, the Holy Spirit is a person, not a mere power or influence. He can be saddened by our behavior. When we, Gods people, harbor bitterness in our hearts and malicious words in our mouths, then we are griev[ing] the Holy Spirit of God. When Paul wrote to the saints at Thessalonica, he instructed them: Do not quench the Spirit. Just as a fire can be quenched, the promptings of the Holy Spirit can be stifled. As we read the word of God, the Spirit can be stirring a spiritual fire of conviction within us. Will we respond to that heavenly influence, or will we suppress it? When the Lord is igniting a vision of service unto Him, will we yield or will we extinguish it? When the Lord is calling us to intercessory prayer, will we cry out to Him or will we suppress that desire He is kindling? Will we allow the Spirit to blaze within our hearts, or will we quench the Spirit? O Father, I am convicted by Your Spirit of times that I have behaved in these same ways. I have resisted and grieved and quenched the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. Lord, I repent, and I ask You to show me any area of my life that is not yielded to the full work of Your Spirit. This I pray through Christ, my Lord, Amen. ________________________________________ March 11, 2014 Obedience to the “Heavenly Vision” I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision —Acts 26:19 If we lose “the heavenly vision” God has given us, we alone are responsible— not God. We lose the vision because of our own lack of spiritual growth. If we do not apply our beliefs about God to the issues of everyday life, the vision God has given us will never be fulfilled. The only way to be obedient to “the heavenly vision” is to give our utmost for His highest— our best for His glory. This can be accomplished only when we make a determination to continually remember God’s vision. But the acid test is obedience to the vision in the details of our everyday life— sixty seconds out of every minute, and sixty minutes out of every hour, not just during times of personal prayer or public meetings. “Though it tarries, wait for it . . .” (Habakkuk 2:3). We cannot bring the vision to fulfillment through our own efforts, but must live under its inspiration until it fulfills itself. We try to be so practical that we forget the vision. At the very beginning we saw the vision but did not wait for it. We rushed off to do our practical work, and once the vision was fulfilled we could no longer even see it. Waiting for a vision that “tarries” is the true test of our faithfulness to God. It is at the risk of our own soul’s welfare that we get caught up in practical busy-work, only to miss the fulfillment of the vision. Watch for the storms of God. The only way God plants His saints is through the whirlwind of His storms. Will you be proven to be an empty pod with no seed inside? That will depend on whether or not you are actually living in the light of the vision you have seen. Let God send you out through His storm, and don’t go until He does. If you select your own spot to be planted, you will prove yourself to be an unproductive, empty pod. However, if you allow God to plant you, you will “bear much fruit” (John 15:8). It is essential that we live and “walk in the light” of God’s vision for us (1 John 1:7).
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 04:57:17 +0000
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