Discovering How You Can Endure To The End

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 11)

"The words and lessons found in this book are meant to encourage and admonish you on your journey to a healed heart, a heart that is single-minded and single in purpose, aiming to please and imitate Jesus by our surrender and the obedience that follows.  Wouldn't it be great if it only required just one act of and choice for obedience, or even just a day of it?  The problem is this:  our journey here on earth is long, especially when one considers the number of times we will be called upon to be obedient!"

Beginning in early October  I will be posting on the topic of how we can endure the rest of our journey to an unbroken heart.  We will be taking a closer look at Hebrews 12: 1-4 where you might just discover the scriptural prescription for the endurance that will be required of you to not only complete the race, but win it!

Be watching for more of my posts in a couple of weeks!

Taking A Look Back

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 11)

Taking a look back to where we have been in our journey from the Tabernacle Door into the Holy of Holies will always be profitable.  Seeing where you have been, and knowing where your are heading, is the key to living victoriously in the present!

"If we have been making spiritual adjustments during the previous chapters, then we are well into the journey of our lifetime.  This journey has taken us through Moses' Tabernacle, learning how it relates to our journey toward Christ-likeness and how to appropriate its applicable truths to our spiritual lives.  The Tabernacle, being likened to our hearts, the very place where God now resides, was a tool that we used, not only for discovering where we currently stand on this journey to whole-heartedness on this earth, but also for plotting the journey to our Heavenly home.

But the Tabernacle left us with some questions.  We discovered that we were at crossroads, needing to make a decision as to how we would live our lives.  Knowing where we are at [in the journey] leads us on to a choice as to which direction we will now travel.  The crossroads was an opportunity for us to clearly understand that we must consider our ways so that we might choose the correct spiritual paths for the rest of our lives.  But that chapter left us with yet another question--just how doe we continually choose the right path?

That question forced us to take a better look at our hearts, the Tabernacle of God.  If we were to consider our ways, it would be critical that we take a magnifying glass to what our 'ways' have actually been.  By filling in the cracked and damaged Heart Diagram with those things that keep us separated from intimacy with God, we soon discovered that our 'ways' have been bound up in gods, the sins that we bow down to and worship.  I doubt that your filled-in heart was a pretty picture.  I know that mine horrified me as I realized, with great clarity, just how sinful a place my heart was.  It saddened me, as I am sure yours did you, to see the gods that replaced Jesus on the throne of my heart.

But it was not going to be enough to just identify what was keeping us out of the Holy of Holies.  Something had to be done within our sinful hearts.  God definitely needed to be placed in the center of our hearts, replacing the sin and pridefulness, or we would surely fail in the journey.  Our attempts without God will always end up just exactly like our feeble attempts at New Year's resolutions!  As we returned to the Word, we discovered that God had a plan for us to dispossess the gods of our hearts by taking full vengeance on them.  They had to be dethroned!  It was the answer to yet another unspoken question.

What makes taking full vengeance on our sins and gods so difficult is that we are prone to disobey the commands of God, even when they are clearly spelled out for us.  We learned that there are spiritual consequences for not fully following all that God has commanded us to do.  The only way to be obedient is to understand and practice the discipline of surrender.  We learned that in surrendering to God, the power of the Holy Spirit is released from us, and that He is able to overcome sin and bring victory to our lives through that surrender.  This was what we learned from the Artesian Well.  Our life goal should be to live our lives surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ!"

These 3 Diagrams, of the Tabernacle's spiritual journey, of a sin-filled Heart, and of the power and victory we can experience in the Artesian Well's release of the Spirit by surrender, are to be used for your on-going spiritual growth.  God is calling you to maturity in Christ!

Prayer Of Surrender

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

"I would like to close [this chapter] with a prayer that I found many years ago.  It is a powerful prayer and has led me in my own surrender on more than one occasion.  To pray it without conviction will not yield the fruit of repentance.  But this prayer prayed with a broken and contrite heart will help you to humble yourself before the Lord.  Once humbled you can bring in the heavy machinery of surrender and repentance so that the Spirit can be unleashed in you and out of you!  There is now no need for prayers that beg, 'Give me strength, Lord.'  The Holy Spirit is all the strength you need, and He lives inside of you!  His strength is already ours if we will yield to Him and die to the fleshly emotions of fear, doubt, and dread.  If you are ready now to begin the deep drilling process of repentance and surrender, then pray this prayer out loud . . . on your knees or on your face before the Lord God.

Lord, I'm Yours.  Whatever the cost may be, may Your will be done in my life.  I realize I'm not here on earth to do my own thing. or to seek my own fulfillment, or my own glory.  I'm not here to indulge my desires, to increase my possessions, to impress people, to be popular, to prove I'm somebody important, or to promote myself.  I'm not even here to be relevant or successful by human standards.  I'm here to please You. 

I offer myself to You, for You are worthy.  All that I am or hope to be, I owe to You.  I'm Yours by creation, and every day I receive from You life and breath and all things.  And I am Yours because You bought me, and the price You paid was the precious blood of Christ.  You alone are worthy to be my Lord and Master.  I yield to You, my gracious and glorious Heavenly Father;  to the Lord Jesus who loved me and gave Himself for me; to the Holy Spirit and His gracious influence and empowering.

All that I am and all that I have I give to You.  I give You any rebellion in me that resists doing Your will.  I give You my pride and self-dependence that tell me I can do Your  will in my own power if I try hard enough.  I give You my fears that tell me I'll never be able to do Your will in some areas of my life.  I consent to let You energize me . . . to create within me, moment by moment, both the desire and the power to do Your will.

I give You my body and each of its members  . . my entire inner being:  my mind, my emotional life, and my will . . . my loved ones . . . my marriage or my hope for marriage . . . my abilities and gifts . . . my strengths and weaknesses . . . my health . . . my status (whether high or low) . . . my possessions . . . my past, my present, and my future . . . and when and how I'll go Home.  I am here to love You, to obey You, and to glorify You.  O my Beloved, may I be a joy to You.     Amen and amen!

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(Excerpted from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

"Consider you spiritual life right now.  Do you desire to be pleasing to the Lord by bringing Him your sacrifice of surrender now?  If so, let these next tree passages of Scripture shed new light on the picture of the artesian well of surrender.  They will clearly reveal the life rewards that await the one who is submitted to the power of the Holy Spirit within:

• Therefore, you will joyously draw water from the springs of salvation.    (Isaiah 12:3)

•  Jesus answered and said to here, 'Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.'    (John 4: 13-14)

• He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water,' but this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.   (John 7: 38-39)

God is so specific, isn't He?  But let's not just revel in the wonderful thought of what can be.  Let's take the thought one more step -- into action!  We must apply this truth by contemplating our own lives.  Do you have sin in your life that you are holding onto, sin that is keeping God's power trapped inside you?  Has your pride kept you from giving over all of your sin habits to the God who desires to explode forth from you?  Do you understand clearly now that repentance and surrender are the only tools that will enable you to bore deeply into your own heart, bringing you to victorious, overcoming power in your life?  Are you ready now for the Holy Spirit to flow out of your life to others, touching them with His living waters?  Do you realize that in your lifetime, there will be many such borings of repentance and surrender?  Surrender was never intended to be a 'once and for all' deal.  It will be a continual process during your walk toward Heaven.

Your understanding and application of surrender of your whole heart will determine the amount of power that can be witnessed in your life.  If you seek to overcome by the power of the Spirit, then you must find the altar of death and the surrender that can only be found at the veil of the Tabernacle.  That is the place where your flesh dies.

The Spiritual Side of an Artesian Well -- Part 2

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

Yesterday I blogged on the workings of an artesian well.  Today, let's look at the amazing application we can take from it, and by it, discover the exciting experience we will have when we surrender our whole lives to God!

"Now here is where it gets fun!  Looking at the spiritual application that we can glean from the artesian well, we can clearly see the unmistakeable similarities between it and our surrender.  Let these points of comparison minister to you as you see the perfection of God's picture of the power of your surrender to Him.

1. The Holy Spirit indwells us at the time of our salvation.  He rains down on us from Heaven and comes into our very hearts, His Tabernacle.  He took the path of least resistance, filling up the holes of our sin-ravaged lives, as He made His way down deep inside of our souls.
2. Once inside of us, our fleshly, sinful pride traps  Him, so that He resides deep within us, waiting to be released by our full surrender to His authority and control.  We know His power is there inside of us, but we don't often see it exploding forth in our lives, and neither does anyone else.  He remains hidden, and our pride keeps us from surrendering fully to His Lordship.
3. When we decide to bring in the heavy equipment of repentance and surrender, a deep boring  will take place within our hearts.  This repentance and surrender will break through what has been our impermeable sin and pride.  Once our repentance and brokenness go deep enough, the Holy Spirit is released  in us, and out of us, like a powerful fountain.  He will shoot upward to the Father, glorifying Him and granting us power and victory over our sin.  Then others will also experience the power of our surrender as we begin to walk under the influence of the Spirit instead of our flesh and sin nature.  They will see the 'new and greatly improved' us!

It is the rain in the diagram that is the Holy Spirit.  In the Word, the Spirit is often spoken of as water of various kinds.  The porous rock is the sin in our lives.  It is all the holes in our sinful hearts that are obvious as we came to know the Lord.  But then, as is often the case, the Holy Spirit becomes trapped inside of us by the impermeable rock of our fleshly pride and daily sin.  The Holy Spirit is now rendered powerless and useless [just like the trapped rain water in the artesian well]  because we refuse to allow Him to have full control of our lives.  Do you see how our brokenness over sin, and the repentance and surrender that follows, is the drill that is necessary for the Spirit to come forth from us in power?  Without our repentance and surrender to the Spirit, He lies trapped inside of us with nowhere to go.  He is the power inside of us that we have been given to be all that God intended for us to be.  When He is not allowed to explode out from us by our surrender, we live powerless lives that are without victory over sin.  We live in the flesh instead of in the Spirit.  In this state, we will surely die and stand before the Lord with regrets for not having become the person God desired and empowered us to be.  And we will have little, if any impact, on a lost and dying world.

Awesome, isn't it?   You have been equipped to walk in the power of the Spirit through your acts of being broken and repentant of your sin, and surrendered completely to God.  These are the drills God uses to release the trapped Spirit from within you! 

Can you now share this principle with others who might need to know how to set the Spirit inside of them free?  What a great visual to use with those who ask you what has happened to you, and how it is that you have changed.  You can now witness to them that it is the power of the Spirit in you, that has been released out of you by your surrender to the perfect will of God, that they are witnessing in you!"

Now, that is a testimony!

The Spiritual Side of an Artesian Well

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 (Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)


Hello dear readers!  I am back from our Women's Retreat, and I want to share something with you that is a wonderful picture of what surrender can look like in your life.  This is a 2-part blog, so don't miss reading it tomorrow!

"Several years ago, God gave me a picture of part of His creation that reveals one of His spiritual principles so clearly.  I love it when He does that!  This natural world we live in will often paint us a picture of the spiritual realm of our lives.  The picture He painted for me was that of an artesian well.  Study for a moment the picture [accompanying this blog].  It should help you visualize the truth to follow.

You might be asking yourself this question:  'What is an artesian well?'  I asked myself the same question when it was presented in our home school curriculum in science.  In order to teach it, I had to know exactly what it was.  So I did a little research in the encyclopedia, but I found a form of this simple picture in a set of children's science reference books.  As I looked at the picture, the explanation, and a definition from Webster's Dictionary, it was not long before I sensed God speaking to my soul regarding the artesian well as a picture of our repentance, but even more as a picture of the power of surrender!

Let's get a good working understanding of an artesian well.  Like all wells, its water is reached by boring into the earth.  But by God's design, when the drilling reaches the water that is stored up in an artesian well, it sprays up like a fountain with great power because it is under great pressure beneath the ground.  Now that you know that, does the picture make a little more sense?

So, just how was the artesian well created?  It all begins with rain.  Rain hits the ground and saturates the surface land.  Usually an artesian well is formed  when the rain water reaches the layers of rock beneath the surface, the first layer being porous rock.  The water passes through the holes in the rock quickly and easily, moving downward as it seeks the lowest level by the path of least resistance.  It fills every hole it finds.  It continues its downward advance until it reaches the lowest level of rock.  There it is trapped between layers of impermeable rock, and there it is kept contained until heavy machinery is used to bore deeply through the walls of the impermeable rock.  Once the drill reaches the pressurized water, it spews forth, shooting upward with great power and force.  It resembles a geyser as it explodes upward.

Now here is where it gets fun!  Looking at the spiritual application we can glean from the artesian well, it can now minister to us as we begin to see how perfectly the artesian well is a picture of the power of surrender in our lives."

But I am not going to share that with you until tomorrow!  Check back than to get the full disclosure!

Reaping What You Sow

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."  (Galatians 6:7)

"Do you see what your response is to be [to the enemy's deception and lies about the seriousness of our sin]?  God is calling you to surrender your sins and turn from them.  You are not to be deceived by the lies of the devil.  If you continue to make  excuses for not surrendering and repenting, God will eventually say to you, 'I will not be mocked!'  When you choose to sow for yourselves the seeds of denial of your sin and its corrupt influence, you will reap a bitter fruit of defeat.  But if you sow for yourself the seeds of repentance and surrender, from a heart that is broken and contrite, you will necessarily produce a different kind of fruit.  That fruit is victory over your sin and a powerful life in the Spirit that you will never know unless you turn from your sin and allow Him full control of your life.  Victory and power lie just around the corner for the one who will lay down the boastful pride of life for the purpose of surrendering to God's authority.  Persevering victory and power are the gifts of God for the truly broken-hearted, surrendered servant of the the Lord."

Are you interested in gaining victory over your sin?  Do you want to see what God can do through you?  Then God asks only one thing of you:  Remove all excuse to sin and replace it with real, heart-wrenching repentance and surrender to Him!  This response to your sin moves the heart of God.  In this, He will never feel that you are mocking Him!

Beginning next week (I am on retreat this weekend with my Women's Group) I will begin to explain to you what happens to the Holy Spirit when He enters us the moment we are saved, and what will be required of us in order for His power to be released out of us.  I will be using an Artesian Well to describe it to you.  The correlation is incredible!  You won't want to miss it!

Sacrifices The Delight God

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

"What will happen if we do surrender our sinful hearts to God?  Our surrender will lead to victory, perseverance, and power!  If we lack power and victory in our daily walk, we can most assuredly know that our personal surrender is lacking.  Psalm 51: 16-17 sheds some more light on just what kind of sacrifice God requires of us when we surrender.

For You do not delight in [animal] sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offerings.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

 God wants our hearts and spirits to be broken by our sinfulness.  He is looking for a broken and contrite heart in the one who comes to a place of total surrender.  This brokenness and contriteness must be so intense that it leads to real repentance, the turning away from that sin and toward the God of our heart.  This kind of brokenness is a deep sorrow and remorse for our sinfulness that is followed by the desire to never fall prey to that sin ever again. 

To be broken literally means to 'break or crush into pieces' and the word contrite  means to 'collapse'!  Is that how you have taken full vengeance on your sin in the past?  Have you ever been to that place?  Have you been broken to pieces by your sin?  Or have you ever collapsed from following after your sinful flesh,  your sins, your gods?  It is difficult in our pridefulness to get to that place of contriteness and brokenness.  We will try every form of evasion to avoid being ground to pieces, won't we?  Believe me, I know that from my own experiences!  True surrender and repentance are rare in the church today, it seems.  Yet we cannot offer God the correct sacrifice if we are never broken and contrite about our sin. 

Have you ever found yourself saying any of these things to yourself, as I have?

• "I don't need to do that because I'm already forgiven."
• "I am not all that affected by my sin."
• "Who cares anyway?"
• "I don't want to be labeled a radical Christian."
• "I am afraid that if I fully surrender, God will make me do something that I am uncomfortable with."

Maybe the enemy has spoken things to you that are different than these.  It doesn't really matter what has has spoken to you; they are still excuses if you listen to them and use them, and worse, believe them. 

Do you know what all these excuses are?  They are lies and deception from an enemy who would love for us to remain unyielded to God.  He stands to gain territory in our hearts if he can keep us from submitting to God's call to surrender.  If the enemy of of our faith  can make us believe, for any reason, that we don't need to take our sin seriously, then he will be thrilled to keep us from the power that is available to all who do surrender to God's full control.  He would love for us to never surrender anything to God!  He would love to continue to hold us captive in our sin!  He wants to keep us from the victory God has for us!"

For the believer, spiritual healing is all about the surrender that brings us victory over sin.  If you want to lead a victorious, holy life for Jesus, you must come to grips with the idea that it only flows from a heart that has been utterly shattered by its sin, and is now fully surrendered to Him.  There are no short-cuts on the way to the victory that Jesus can bring to our spiritual lives.

The Power Beyond Your Surrender

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(Excerpted from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 10)

"Bernard Shaw played the What  If game shortly before he died.  'Mr. Shaw,' asked a reporter, 'if you could live your life over and be anybody you've known, or any person from history, who would you be?' 

'I would choose,' replied Shaw, 'to be the man George Bernard Shaw could have been, but never was.'

Can't you hear the remorse in the voice of George Bernard Shaw?  What was it that he regretted?  His regret was in not living up to the full potential that dwelt within him.  Can you relate to that?  Have you lived up to your full potential as a child of God?  Having looked at the topic of surrender in the previous chapter as the means of entering into the daily presence of God and walking in submission to Him by the Spirit, we now turn our attention to the vital role the Holy Spirit will play as we surrender our whole hearts to Him.  When we learn to surrender every sin in our broken hearts, and allow Him to live out the holy life of Christ through us, we will begin to see the message of this chapter:  There is great victory and power that lies just beyond our surrender.  By that very power we can become in Christ all that He intend for us to be and live a live with no regrets for who we could have been."

As we crucify our flesh and its sin, we begin to die daily.  And as we die, the Spirit is emboldened and released out of us to live through us a victorious and holy life.  We no longer have to 'try' to be victorious and holy; we just become that by the power we are surrender to, the power that is living inside of us.  That is good news for today!  We can have that life right NOW!

Pausing To Contemplate

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

At the end of each chapter of my book, there are 5 questions to answer, each one designed to help you look within, come up with the real answers, and hopefully move you closer to God as you contemplate your spiritual journey.  So, before we move on to quotes in this blog from Chapter 10, I want to give you this opportunity to pause and look within your heart.  This time of introspection will hopefully help you discover some truths about yourself that you might not have thought of otherwise.  Here are your 5  questions.   (Okay 8, in this case;  sometimes certain questions beg another!)


"PERSONAL INTROSPECTION

1. When you allow your flesh to have control and make the decisions in your life, who is truly the god of your life?
2. By what actions can God and all you come in contact with see that you are walking on the Highway to Holiness?  How do your answers line up with 2 Chronicles 7: 14 and Romans 12: 1-2?
3. How does surrender differ from making New Year's resolutions?  Who is in control when you surrender, and when you resolve to change?
4. What part of the Tabernacle symbolizes the crucifixion of our flesh, our greatest surrender?  How close are you to the Holy of Holies when you are surrendering your flesh?
5. In which areas of your heart is your surrender like a yo-yo -- you throw out the sin, but it seems to keep coming back?  Consider whether or not you have truly surrendered it."

What did your answers to the questions reveal to you?  By looking within you are able to process what you have been learning.  Never leave this step of your growth to chance.  Read the questions, ask yourself for the real answer, consider what your answers mean, and then determine what course corrections God might be asking you to make.  It is all a part of your spiritual healing.

Removing The Yo-Yo From Your Spiritual Life

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

"Believing that Jesus is Savior and King is enough in our moment of salvation, but it is not enough the moment we desire to live the abundant life promised by Christ.  We must choose to make Jesus the Lord of our lives and believe that He is in charge of our lives, making a conscious decision and effort to surrender to Him based on that belief.  The enemy loves to use the lie that salvation is enough for a transformed life.  Believing that lie is one of the main reasons that so many Christians stay in the Outer Court of the Tabernacle (living only in the knowledge of our salvation, baptism, and eternal life) for so many years, enjoying its ease and refusing to step into the Inner Court of surrender and the deepening knowledge of and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have you experienced a full surrender to the will of God?  Are you seeking to continually surrender your flesh and your will to God every day?  Or are you like a child playing with a yo-yo when it comes to your sin--you throw it out and a moment later you pull it back into your life?  When will you finally, once and for all, cut the string?  What is your answer to God's call to surrender and heart transformation?  Andrew Murray understood surrender like this, and in a public address titled Absolute Surrender, he said, 'God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.  The condition fro obtaining God's full blessing is absolute surrender to Him.'

If you will heed His call, you are about to see what great power from the Spirit can be released from within you.  Interested?"

Over the next few days, I will help you discover the great power that lies within every child of God and how to see that power be used for God's glory.  In teaching you the concepts of releasing the trapped power inside of you, I hope to both challenge and inspire you to do what is required of you so that you will see the Holy Spirit explode out of you and touch a lost world!

Full Surrender--The Act Of Denying Yourself Daily

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

"So, what does it mean to fully surrender?  I believe it refers to a point in time when we become serious about our relationship with God and clearly understand the requirements of God for all believers.  It doesn't mean that all of our sin will be magically removed from our sinful flesh, but it does mean that we are ready to give God the control of our life in such a way that we allow Him to systematically, and by spiritual surgery, remove those things that cause us to stumble and fall.

Literally, to 'be transformed' [as seen in Romans 12:2] means 'to change by means of an invisible process which begins during our life on earth.'  Interesting, isn't it?  We are not to be conformed to the world, but instead we are to be constantly changing into the likeness of Christ.  This is surrender, and it is the spiritual service of worship that comes from the sacrificing of our flesh on the altar of death.  This surrender leads us to sanctification [being made holy].  Like Abraham, we are to worship God by loving Him enough to obey what He desires.  Oswald Chambers says it this way:

Sin belongs to hell and the devil . . . It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my nature independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought . . . To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our souls into the centre of its greatest battle . . . It is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something.  Jesus said, 'If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself' . . . Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence . . . If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us."

Are you willing to pay the price of full surrender to Christ and His purposes for you?  Then you are going to become intimately acquainted with daily denial of your own purposes.  This is death to your flesh.  This is full surrender to God.  Our surrender is our resolute sacrifice of our flesh, so that the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit can flow naturally out of us.  This is the surrender that brings victory!

Who Controls You?

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(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing:  The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)

This morning I want to teach you a practical principle.  Let me begin with a question.  Is Jesus the LORD of your life?  To know Jesus as your Lord is to know that you are not in control of anything--He is.  And in order for Him to be in full control of you, you must live in a perpetual state of surrender. Moving from knowing Jesus as your Savior to knowing Him as both Savior and Lord requires a shift in your mindset.  You must begin to consider, over and over, that you are no longer in charge of your life; He is in control of it...every moment and aspect  of your today and everyday!

"Jesus will never be the Lord  of the lost in this world because they have yet to receive Him as their Savior.  We believers tend to accept and know Him readily as our Savior, yet we struggle to allow Him to be Lord.  Quite often the only real difference between the lost and the saved is that we believe that Jesus died to save us.  Most of us do not know Him as Lord  any more than the world does.  We only seem to know that He is supposed to be our Lord.  In actuality, for Him to be Lord, we have to live life surrendered to Him.  That will require us to crucify our desire to be in control of everything in our lives."

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.  (Romans 12: 1-2)

"By looking at the Greek definitions of a couple of phrases (one today and one in tomorrow's blog) from Romans 12:1-2, we see a critical step in the walk of every believer.  The true rendering of the phrase 'present yourselves' is this:  a presenting and a yielding of your whole self.  Now let me ask you [another] important question.  Were you fully surrendered at the time of your salvation?  If you are like me, the answer is a resounding 'no!'  Jesus did not become the Lord  of everything in my life the moment I was saved.  He was both capable of and available to be that, but on the day that I was saved, I only surrendered to Him as my Savior.  I had no understanding of what it meant to know Jesus as my Lord,  my Master, as the one in full control of me."

Is that your testimony as well?  Then we must find motivation in our spiritual journey to discover the place where Jesus is Lord of us. That motivation can only be found and realized as we begin to truly know that Jesus is to be in full control of us, and respond to that by fully surrendering to Him.