As your pastor, I was excited to learn that one of the top initiatives of the Alaska Conference is discipleship, which I prefer to call Walking With Jesus. And the best place to start is the beginning, and walking with Jesus always starts with surrender. Until we completely surrender our lives to Jesus, there is no discipleship, it is just admiration of a great God and man. It is only when we give our lives to Jesus we become Disciples, and the walk with Jesus begins. So for the next few months we will be giving special attention to surrender. I hope you will read carefully, because surrender for the Christian is a daily, moment by moment experience. When we cease to surrender at any stage of our walk with Jesus, our growth stops, and will not continue until we are once again completely surrendered.
In 1 Kings 20:1-4 we read,
“Now Ben-Hadad king of Aram mustered his entire army. Accompanied by thirty-two king's with their chariots, he went up and besieged Samaria and attacked it. He sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel, saying, “This is what Ben-Hadad says: ‘Your silver and gold are mine, and the best of your wives and children are mine.’ The king of Israel answered, ‘Just as you say, my lord the king. I and all I have are yours.’”
King Ben-Hadad was asking for complete and absolute surrender, and that is exactly what king Ahab gave. This is exactly what Jesus is asking of you and me in our walk with Him! Our answer to every prompting of the Holy Spirit needs to be, “Just as you say, my Lord the King. I and all I have are Yours.” This is so important for us to not just accept intellectually, but to embed in our very souls! For us to completely receive God’s blessings our surrender must be completely and absolutely! And I am not talking about material blessings, this is so much deeper than that, but if we are willing to completely surrender ourselves to Jesus and stay put, there is no end to what God will do for us, and through us, because Jesus is dwelling in our lives.
Years ago Andrew Murray tells of how he was meeting with a church group, and they were talking about the condition of the church, and what the great need of the church and its believers was. In their group was a godly man who had been training workers for many years. He was asked, what is the great need of the church, and the message that ought to be preached? He answered very quietly and very simply and determinedly: “Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.” This man went on to say that with the workers that he taught, if they were sound on this one point, even if they were backwards in any other area, if they were surrendered to Jesus, and willing to be taught they continued to grow in their spiritual walk.
Friends, the condition for receiving God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him!
Next week we will look at how God expects our surrender! See you Sabbath!
I love you!
Brad
In 1 Kings 20:1-4 we read,
“Now Ben-Hadad king of Aram mustered his entire army. Accompanied by thirty-two king's with their chariots, he went up and besieged Samaria and attacked it. He sent messengers into the city to Ahab king of Israel, saying, “This is what Ben-Hadad says: ‘Your silver and gold are mine, and the best of your wives and children are mine.’ The king of Israel answered, ‘Just as you say, my lord the king. I and all I have are yours.’”
King Ben-Hadad was asking for complete and absolute surrender, and that is exactly what king Ahab gave. This is exactly what Jesus is asking of you and me in our walk with Him! Our answer to every prompting of the Holy Spirit needs to be, “Just as you say, my Lord the King. I and all I have are Yours.” This is so important for us to not just accept intellectually, but to embed in our very souls! For us to completely receive God’s blessings our surrender must be completely and absolutely! And I am not talking about material blessings, this is so much deeper than that, but if we are willing to completely surrender ourselves to Jesus and stay put, there is no end to what God will do for us, and through us, because Jesus is dwelling in our lives.
Years ago Andrew Murray tells of how he was meeting with a church group, and they were talking about the condition of the church, and what the great need of the church and its believers was. In their group was a godly man who had been training workers for many years. He was asked, what is the great need of the church, and the message that ought to be preached? He answered very quietly and very simply and determinedly: “Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.” This man went on to say that with the workers that he taught, if they were sound on this one point, even if they were backwards in any other area, if they were surrendered to Jesus, and willing to be taught they continued to grow in their spiritual walk.
Friends, the condition for receiving God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him!
Next week we will look at how God expects our surrender! See you Sabbath!
I love you!
Brad
RSS Feed