Posted by roniya | Posted in General, Jesus Christ, Life, Recommended Sermons, Salvation | Posted on 01-09-2010
Tags: contentment, dependence, Life, Rolfe Barnard, Salvation
Hello friends,
Greetings in the Name of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ! Right now I am with my family at a retreat center in the Ozarks. It is a blessing to have time together away from the pressures and busyness of normal life. I have been grateful to have some quiet moments with the Lord sitting on the ledge of a bluff looking out over Table Rock Lake with the warm August breeze blowing gently through the trees.
How quickly the summer slips by! I am amazed that there are only four months left to this year. How have I lived the past eight months for Christ glory and how can I pour out my life even more over the next four? The words of the Psalmist are increasingly more and more becoming my words, “LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am. Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Selah.” (Psa 39:4-5). We have so little time to live on this earth, so little time to forsake all to follow Christ, so little time to love Him in this fallen world, so little time to run this race that is set before us. How well are you running? We need to ask ourselves this question and not live life carelessly because we will one day give account to our Creator for each word that we speak and each moment that we live.
The more I come to understand all that Christ has done to provide salvation, justification, and sanctification for me the more I long to have the privilege of serving Him and even just doing one thing for Him. He is worthy of everything we could possible give Him. To just have the privilege of serving Him in the most obscure manner for all our days would hardly come close to showing a return of love that He is worthy of and deserves. And yet, He is so pleased with us and loves us so much, not based on what we do, but on what He has done, and we can rest content in His love knowing that it is not what I do that counts, but what Christ does in and through me. This brings forth a lesson that the Lord has been teaching me over the summer.
Childlike Dependence.
I thought I had that all figured out and was walking in a place of leaning and depending…but the Lord has brought circumstances into my life over the past few months that have proved to be a trial to my faith and have revealed how easily my heart tends to walk according to it’s own understanding.
LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever. (Psa 131:1-3)
At the beginning of August I made a trip up to Nebraska with my dad and sister. Here is a journal entry from that week:
“I would be treated as a child and guided where I go”
Childlike dependency. . . I have so far to go in learning this. I came up to Nebraska with great plans of accomplishing an important project. I envisioned quiet hours of focusing on this project with minimal distractions. It was not meant to be. I woke up the first morning with the beginnings of a bad headcold. On the second day the pain was so great that I mainly spent the day in my room listening to Sarah Edward’s biography. I was so discouraged over my helpless state and groaned before the Lord asking why He had allowed this sickness. By the third day I gave up on my project and settled down to rest and read. This evening as I sat out on the hay-bales soaking in the warm August sunshine I again sought the Lord as to why my plans had be so unfulfilled.
~Childlike Dependence~
My Father desires that I lean completely on Him for everything including my plans. It is not wrong to have plans, but seeking my Father’s will must be preeminent above all other guiding factors. If He wants me to work on my project, blessed be God; if He sees best that I be humbled through sickness, blessed be His Name. All that He does is good and He must have my complete trust because human looks and hearts may deceive me, only God’s way is perfect, perfect wisdom is found in God alone and He will never fail the trusting child. I live for Him, I breath for Him alone…it is only fitting that I depend completely on Him, My Abba Father.
That very evening when I wrote the blog post was the night that we made a six hour trip to the closest VA hospital for my dad who was having serious issues with his eye. Thankfully the Lord touched his eye and it is healing. But as we travelled there I marveled over how the Lord had been teaching me about dependency right before we made an unexpected visit to Omaha and suddenly ended up in an emergency room. Later that morning we visited an old friend of my parents. By this time, I was completed exhausted from being up all night and really didn’t want to spend the extra time visiting this lady. I walked into her home and looked up to see a plaque that read, ‘God is the Blessed Controller of all things’. Once again the Lord confirmed to me the lesson that He was teaching me to depend upon Him. Since that time I have had so many trials and tests come in and I am so grateful for the foundation of complete dependency on the Lord. Truly the Lord is faithful to those that fear Him and trust Him.
A couple weeks ago my family tasted of the bitterness of a precious life cut suddenly short. My sister-in-law was 23 weeks pregnant with their first child. Great was the joy over the announcement of this child’s coming earlier this year…and great was the sorrow when her mother went into early labor and delivered little Christine Hope who weighed 15 oz and was 11 inches long. Little Christine made a valiant effort to live and she did live for nine brief hours before her soul took flight to the arms of Jesus Christ and left behind her fragile and beautiful little body. We had a beautiful graveside service for our sweet little girl. There were so many people who came to weep and mourn with my brother and his wife in their grief. She only lived nine hours….and yet her life impacted people around the world. The Lord used her life to inspire me and spur me on to live even more passionately for Jesus Christ and the glory of God. If someone so small could honor Him so much, how much more glory and honor should our lives bring to Jesus Christ! You can see pictures of my beautiful niece here, www.christinehope.courvillefamily.com
Another lesson that the Lord has been teaching me is that of contentment. Once again, I thought I had this lesson down and was doing pretty good in this area….until I was tested. The Lord has allowed me to go through a severe trial of trusting Him with a particular circumstance in my life. The Lord greatly used the Free Grace Broadcaster fall issue on contentment to bring conviction to my heart as well as more understanding about contentment. Here are a few definitions of contentment that were helpful for me: “Contentment is a disposition of mind in which we rest satisfied with the will of God respecting our temporal affairs –without hard thoughts or hard speeches concerning His allotments and without any sinful desire for a change. It submissively receives what is given. It thankfully enjoys present mercies. It leaves the future in the hand of unerring wisdom.” William Plumer. “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” Jeremiah Burroughs.
This evening I listened to a sermon by Rolfe Barnard on how God gets men lost. It was a powerful sermon that I highly recommend. I am more and more convinced of the importance of the principles of salvation that are laid out in this message. A man or woman must come to the end of themselves before Christ will begin His work in them. Salvation is not for the person who is just adding it to their life to improve the journey. Salvation is for those who are desperate for help and know that they have no help outside of Christ. And then, it is the Lord who saves. He is the One who quickens and regenerates, and it is according to His mercy that He saves anyone. This is what David Brainerd came to realize as he was seeking after God:
- God demands perfection from man that is impossible for man to produce.
- God demands saving faith that man cannot produce.
- God has the right and exercises the right to give or withhold faith.
- God can save a man or damn a man and still be God and get glory.
When a man or woman comes to this point, to where they’re truly lost, then they’re ready to be saved, then they’re ready to start to cry out to God for mercy, and if they truly believe the promises of God as well as the sovereignty of God, then they will not stop crying for mercy until God either saves them or sends them to hell. That is the kind of desperation one must have in seeking the Lord for salvation. If you don’t care that much about it, then you probably aren’t lost enough and you’ll go straight to hell.
I really do not know who all reads this blog, but if you’re reading this and have never examined your life to see if you’re right with God according to the Scriptures, I plead with you to do so. The book of 1 John is a picture of a true Christian. If you have been born again, then the characteristics (freedom from a life of continual sin; love the brethren, hate sin, you do not love the world, love God, overcomer, etc) will be seen in your life and the Spirit of God will bear witness while you read it that it is true. Please do not be afraid to examine your life to see if you are saved. There isn’t anything more important than making sure that you are a child of God and that you are living a life pleasing to God. It is Christ who saves you and it is Christ who works in you. But if your life is missing the present and continual working of Jesus Christ, then you stand in danger of spending eternity having the eternal wrath of a righteous and just God poured out on you. Another test is if you love the Word of God. Is the greatest delight of your life to read the Bible? Is it alive and quickened to you by the Spirit of God? If not, has it ever been? This is a true characteristic of a Christian. If you’re backslidden and once loved the Word of God and once hated sin, then seek the Lord quickly right now, do not harden your heart in unbelief, repent and seek Christ’s blood for cleansing and forgiveness. The Father welcomes the erring child as soon as they turn their faces back to seek Him. But do not remain in the far country pursuing your own way. It is eternally dangerous to be there. “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” (Heb 10:38-39). Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of your faith!
For those who actually took the time to read all of this….thank you. 
I expect this fall to be very busy with family camp and two weddings. But if I have a chance and the Lord’s leading….I will update this blog. It’s all up to the Lord and how He leads and enables me to walk in the way of His perfect will. Feel free to email me anytime. And if you are troubled about your soul and need to talk to a sister or brother who knows Christ and can help you seek him, please let me know.
May the grace and peace of Jesus Christ be with you and keep you close to His heart all throughout your life.
Do not forget the brevity and fragility of life….and the sure hope there is in Christ Jesus for those who will seek Him with ALL their heart and find Him.
Leaning on my Beloved Christ,
sister Joy
