For thought and meditation

[rl69]

fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ… 1 THESSALONIANS 3:2
After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.
I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”

[USMC87]

Amen and this is exactly what I needed today!

[Wayne Smith]

I was meditating yesterday how completely difficult and almost impossible the small book of Philemon is - if you know the situation.

Philemon was the pastor of a home Church, and had slaves. Osmineous probably stole money from him and ran all the way to Rome (needed money to do that), where Paul met him and introduced him to Christ. Paul writes this letter back to Philemon, whom he personally knew, and what happened next? Philemon could have burned it and ignored it. If he had we would not have it today. Philemon read this letter to his Church, almost certainly in the hearing or knowledge of his slaves. He saved it and sent it on to other Churches for it to have survived into the New Testament.

I think this is a significant example of God grabbing some one and completely changing his trajectory through life.

If you have never read this little book it's probably time to do it now.