"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength" Deuteronomy 6:5
For 19 months I have been in a relentless pursuit and devotion to God like never before. Consecrating my all to Him at the altar of grace. I watched 19 months ago my husband's relentless devotion to God grow even greater as He lifted his hands each day in worship to his Lord as he loved many songs but one in particular, "O Come to the Altar" and he always played it along with many others. This song reminded him of His Savior who forgave Him and whose forgiveness is still available to many as he also prayed daily for everyone he knew...the saved and unsaved while "bearing his cross while he waited for his crown" and "desiring each day to tell the world of the treasure he had found".
He has always been my greatest example, aside from Christ and he would always tell me it is Jesus alone for he is nothing without Christ. His example continues to carry me each day. Praying each day for a mindset with one purpose and asking God to guard my heart and mind as he did, to keep looking up as the waves of emotion twirl around, relinquishing my all to God as He did with relentless devotion to God. This is how he taught me to live...in words and by his example. A mission to love God with all my heart and soul and strength and not allowing the enemy to gain ground through unnecessary distractions and vain imaginations that try to come into my mind and rob me of joy as current, daily, situations often make us think that they have everything to do with our future, but ah, not so with God.
Although our journey with Christ is costly, although it requires much work and determination, faith and believing...it can never be costly enough to know we are His Beloved and to receive all God has to give us in the process of growing in Him each day not to mention in all of Eternity too. When we surrender to Christ whatever we hold most precious in our hands He multiplies it many, many times. The last 19 months has been a time of continued surrender, surrendering all of what He is asking "and finally in our poverty He then will send wealth". In true surrender and dying to self He then gives us peace and overflowing joy....it in an exchange for His life...that "we may have it more abundantly" John 1:10. To follow Christ is the most beautiful privilege we have been given and yes, with great sacrifice, because sacrifice is giving up your best for the best of others. This was the heart of God as He sacrificed His Son. Today I know the heart of God more than every before. No suffering was painful enough or costly enough to keep Jesus from doing the will of the Father for me....He alone is worthy for me to sacrifice my life for Him.
God relentlessly loves us, protects us, forgives us...it is never ending and it never fails us.
God's relentless love led me to a loving relationship with my Savior. When we accept Jesus as the lover of our soul we begin to know what a sacrificial love is. If we want our relationship with Christ to last, to be strengthened, to grow, we must open our Bibles - that is where the real answers are to everything that pertains to life and godliness.
God is looking for those who will live with a reckless abandon and Relentless Devotion to Him. He will try the truth of our faith so that others will see that He has servants who depend upon His bare Word. In Deuteronomy 6:5 we read of this devotion to Him that Moses speaks of: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength". Relentless devotion in our faith and pursuit of Him means to love God with an undivided heart which is the core of our being. It means to love God with all of our soul; mentally and emotionally. It means to love God and with all of our strength, physically...and through all things.
Relentless devotion accepts, receives and believes that all things come from the love and filtering of His hands. Relentless devotion strengthens our faith. Our will's begin to desire a continual exchange for His will to govern our lives. Our hands become open to receive what He wants to give us and they remain open to always give back what He wants to take. This attitude will speak much about our heart...acceptance of the will of God means giving up ours for His as this quote says. "Teach me Lord, to treat all that comes to me with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all"
To open my hands to a Most Loving God and give Him back my husband, my most precious possession here on earth meant believing in a Most Sovereign God who doesn't make mistakes therefore my acceptance means His will is His love. The mysteries of God are not ours to find out while here but we can be sure that everything he does has an eternal purpose and it is always more of Him that we need....more holiness....not answers and solutions.
Whatever test and trial we find ourselves in this day, Christ is able to meet our test and keep us from falling. Even He received the Father's will as the Word tells us... 'He came to do the will of the Father' ...and may we follow His example...may those words be ours. He surrendered His life. It is not in the circumstances themselves that we find ourselves in that require a dying of self but in the willingness to accept the circumstance from His hands and for Jesus' sake....and for the sake of others.
Relinquishing what He is asking of us is always a part of our maturing as believers. He often strips us of our self reliance and of the things we are holding tightly to, always to do a greater work in us....whatever the cost...whatever the loss...and as we relinquish our will in what He is asking...what He is taking.... we begin to loosen our grip on the things which are seen and it causes us to treasure even more that which is most precious, that which is not seen, the invisible, for 'that which is not seen is precious in the sight of God'.
Being relentless in our devotion to God means never giving up, never letting go, steady and continuing with Jesus and His Word....believing God will finish in us that which He has started; regardless. Relentless devotion means I pursue Jesus. We often think that our salvation means that we are now protected in a bubble and there is no need to actively pursue the Lord but it is in our pursuit of Him each day that we grow in Christ. How I recognize each day more and more the importance of being washed in the Word and allowing Gods Word to judge my sin and repent of anything that is hindering my fellowship with Him. To minister to family and other women always means to know I am hidden in Christ, and He is my first priority in all relations....that my fellowship with Christ deepens daily; through His Word, praying continually in all things, and through all things, it means attending church, worshipping Him, sharing my faith and serving the Lord., knowing my calling. It means my heart is fulfilled.... because this is what we were created for.
Thanks be to God, I put my life in His hands and this is my prayer for everyone. When I accepted Christ He invaded my life and I became confident of my purposes in Him. I can look back and see His faithful hand that orchestrated the events of my life...seeing the purpose in much that He allowed...and I can trust Him with my future. God uses all things as a pattern of good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes....this He uses as our devotion to Him is used as a testimony of His grace.
My eyes were opened when I first believed to the wonder of God, the wonder of His Word, the wonder of prayer. The wonder of fellowship with other believers, the wonder of service, and the wonder of seeing others with the love of Christ and seeing the wonder of His purposes unfolding in many lives. I was overwhelmed by the assurance of the forgiveness of all my sins...I now knew His grace and love in my life.
Over thirty years later I am reminded this day of the beginning of my journey with the Lord...one that has been filled with many unknowns along the way but filled with much joy, hope and peace each day. He was always faithful regardless of trials, setbacks, valleys and barren fields...the God who saved me would always be my Savior. If I could trust Him with my Salvation I can surely trust Him each day and with my future....according to each of His Promises. When His life was nailed to the cross, every promise was nailed down with the promise that He had given by His Word, He kept it at Calvary. His Word is able, proven and promised. He has given me His Word and kept it....He has taken my hand and He holds it. I must continue to trust Him for the journey still...."to trust and obey, for there is no other way."
Our Father pursues us relentlessly displaying a perfect and unconditional love for His children...He doesn't 'have to' but He desires to do so. He never intended us to have the mindset of pursuing Him because we 'have to' either but with the mindset that we 'get to'. This is so beautiful of a loving relationship . What a privilege we have been given!
Jesus set time aside continually to spend time with God through all His concerns and in all that He did and in doing so He showed great peace. We can be deceived to think that our answers to life's problems lie in the voices of men, instead of knowing God better and seeking Him. We can be deceived in thinking that our concerns each day are more important than His were....that we have no time...and that spending time with God can wait. Jesus made time and set time aside, aside from the crowds, retreating to a mountain, even entering in the garden before his arrest to spend time with God and seek the will of his Father....such a beautiful example for us all.
The more I walk with the Lord the more I am convinced that I am nothing without Christ. Each new day it becomes more necessary that I eat of His food, drink in His Spirit, and pray through all things....an absence of my time alone with God only leaves me empty, fruitless, joyless and lacking peace. ….like a barren branch that is void of any fruit....void of life because I am disconnected in the day to the One who is my most important source. Instead of Him ruling my day, hectic pressures and life's concerns rule my heart and mind...trials are seen as weighty concerns that overrule my heart and the peace that God is waiting to give to me....I become useless as a river that is all dried up of all it's life giving water, useless as a tree that is unable to bear fruit.
He waits to give us more and more of Himself, to give us all we need to live an abundant blessed life in Him, to give us freedom through His truths, to wash us clean with His Word...we cannot afford to put everything before Him...to think our schedules must manage our day...instead of Him.
Relentless devotion is continually...Shall we keep living in a way that rejects His will, that denies His Word? "Let your heart therefore be wholly devoted to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments, as at this day" 1 Kings 8:61...."....I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ" 2 Cor 11:3.
From pain He does the greatest work in our own needy souls...our answers to others are always spoken with the realization and absolutes truth that He alone can mend brokenness, heal hearts, heal hurts and pain, make beauty from ashes. We speak as one who physically feels another’s pain and intercessory prayer drives us to our knees for them as if the need were ours. We see more clearly of the emptiness of man's methods to help. The true remedy for our life here and to eternity is in Him alone.
May we "lose ourselves in the pursuit of our Savior, and live with reckless abandon after His presence...…....'counting all things loss that we may gain Christ'.
Michelle A. Guerra
Comentários