Wednesday, April 17, 2013 -- Entirely Ready For Change (3)
Wednesday April 17, 2013
To have God remove all our defects of character is to specifically ask Him to take away everything that hinders our ability to live fully in His love. We are precious to God. He has set His heart to take care of us. The purpose of asking God to remove our defects of character is to free us to focus completely on the deep love and rest that a relationship with Him offers.
After a period of glory, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies sent me against the nations who plundered you. For he said, “Anyone who harms you harms my most precious possession. I will raise my fist to crush them, and their own slaves will plunder them.” Then you will know that the Lord of Heaven’s Armies has sent me. (Zechariah 2:8-9 NLT).
God's directions are words of life. They are filled with love and healing for us. To experience life to the full we must obey God's words every time they contradict what we think is right or best. Character builds through our choice for grace and truth. Our character defects are removed by God’s love as we make a choice for God’s way over and over again. “Your kingdom come. Your will be done in my life on earth as it is in heaven.” Any other conversation with God is bargaining, excusing, rebelling, or engaging in a useless exercise of trying to manipulate the God of heaven and earth to do what we want. God is love therefore we can trust Him to work all things in our lives for good. God is trustworthy and could never do anything that is unloving or harmful to us.
Becoming willing to have God remove all our defects of character is a bit like dealing with dirty clothes. We don’t put clean clothes on top of dirty clothes. That would give the appearance of health while we are living with poor hygiene making us prone to disease. We first remove the dirty clothes, take a bath, and then put on clean clothes. We don’t just name sinful habits and defects of character when they are revealed, we give God permission to remove these, cleanse us fully, and then we put on our new self.
We need to become aware of ourselves as children of God. With surrender to the love and truth God reveals, old responses can be put away and all things can become new.
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Audio for Wednesday, April 17, 2013 -- Entirely Ready For Change (3)
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