Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father reveal us anew to ourselves today. Father, show us how we have pleased you. Show us how we have displeased you. And help us to seek out your Will in your Word so that we might please you more and more. Father, thank you for your discipline. Thank you for being clear and kind with us when we need to change, need to grow, need to repent. Your eagerness to forgive us and wash our feet is a rich blessing beyond anything we could hope for. In Jesus's name and by the comforting guidance of the Spirit, help us to draw nearer to your by obience to your Will in your Word. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "Fix My Eyes" by For King & Country
Your Morning Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
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Do you remember what WWJD stands for? What would Jesus do? I remember learning that as a child, and I can honestly say that it was a helpful question for me to learn to ask myself, even if I did not ask it nearly often enough.
It makes sense that we would all likely admit to the same struggle, not asking the question enough. But there's a deeper problem, a struggle beneath and beyond not asking it enough. Like weeding a garden, we are too often content to merely grab at what we can see, and missing the root from which the weed grows.
When we do ask ourselves, WWJD, we are usually driven there by pain, struggle, confusion, grief, and all other sorts of things that stand outside of our daily living, our habits, our routines. For many of us our most sincere prayers come when our control over our own lives has failed, and our desperate need for our savior Jesus is revealed.
How we relate to God in our daily, uninterrupted living says more about our walk with Him than how we respond when we're desperate (or shocked into sudden awareness of our perpetual desperation).
We who have been claimed by Christ are then controlled by His love. We die to our old selves by His death on the cross. And when He leads us out of the tomb of our sin, we then live for Him, and not for ourselves.
Some of the criticisms of we Christians are valid. This being one of them. That we only seem to get real with God when life gets hard. That we claim Him as Father, as Savior, as Comforter, but we really treat Him like an ATM, or a fire extinguisher we hope we don't need to use.
We are not good people who were once bad people. We are living people who were once dead. And we have not been given eternal life and peace with God so that we can live how we want to. We must not live for ourselves. We must live for the one who died and rose again so that we might do the same.
We should live and move and breathe and be according to Jesus's love.
Let's die to ourselves. Die to our agendas. Die to our preferences. Die to our desires and dreams. Die to our sin. And let's live for Jesus, not just occasionally asking ourselves what He would do. May we be joyfully and daily and desperately dependent on Jesus to control our very hearts and minds as we become more like Him.
Want to know how you're doing at this? Ask the ones who know you best. Start with God, and then your spouse, and then your family, and then your friends. Even if their answers hurt, there is hope and help in such Holy hurt as leads to repentance, forgiveness, and obedience.
May the Love of Christ Control Us.
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