Not About Me

1 Cor 6:19-20 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Rom 6:5-14 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

This is where the victory in your life flows from. We are freed from the power of sin by participating in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. His power is imparted to us; His total victory over sin and over evil in all of its forms, and even His will to do God's will.

Jesus did the hard part. He not only died FOR our sins, but He died WITH our sins. He did away with our sins through His own body on the cross so that we might share in His victory through faith. Once you believe in Jesus, then it naturally follows that you surrender yourself to Him--this is the natural response of the human heart to the love of God.

Phil 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

It all hinges on faith. But once you have faith, there is still one more thing needed: INTENTION. When you focus on giving God your earthly life and allowing Him to use your body, that's when His Spirit flows through you and you begin to operate in eternity. That's when His grace enables you to live in the higher realms and frees you from your own selfishness. Your intention to live for God is a simple act of the will, a conscious decision that we make moment by moment. And once you are activated by God's grace and His joy takes the place of your sorrow and hope washes away your despair, then you can see how easy it is to make living for God a habit. You can see how pointless it is to block the flow of His living water with self.

You will spontaneously experience a new attitude of service and gratefulness and thanksgiving. We receive the rewards of Christ's faithfulness and sinlessness, and there is no greater gift than that. My vain, petty, miserable, selfish existence in exchange for His limitless power and joy overflowing with hope of eternal life. A life of service to God is the most fulfilling and rewarding life imaginable.

To share His hope is our duty and our great privilege.

So if you're feeling down in the duldrums or lacking in grace and joy and power, just remember: "it's not about me." Renew and re-focus your intention to let God live through you, moment by moment.

“Notice how Christ uses that word deny twice. He said to Peter the first time, “Deny himself” (Matthew 16:24); He said to Peter the second time, “Thou shalt deny me” (Matthew 26:34). It is either of the two. There is no other choice for us; we must either deny self or deny Christ. There are two great powers fighting each other the self-nature in the power of sin, and Christ in the power of God. Either of these must rule within us.” ― Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender

Notice that Peter was ready to die for Jesus until he was put to the test. But also notice that this was before he received the Holy Spirit. Once he received the Spirit in the 2nd chapter of Acts, he was transformed, and his very first sermon added 3,000 souls to the new church.

Luke 9:23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. 24 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it."

Notice how the version in Luke adds the word "daily."

Salvation is often thought of as a one-time thing, but Jesus is telling us that He wishes to fellowship with us every day. And He cannot do that if we are blocking the channel and crowding Him out of our lives. He longs to spend time with us and to give us that intimate heart fellowship that our soul craves and to supply all of our needs. He just needs us to make room for him.

Have you ever watched one of those "Hoarders" shows in TV? Where people have collections of stuff or stacks of boxes or just trash everywhere and maybe a pathway they can walk through? Maybe the toilet doesn't even work any more, and the place is infested with rats or the smell of cat poop and urine burns your eyes and lungs, the kitchen sink isn't even accessible any more.

That's what our hearts are like when we don't make time for the Lord and let Him take control. There is so much junk in there that the front door doesn't even have room to swing open. That's a picture of how desperate the human condition is when we don't surrender to God.

How important is all that junk? Is it more important than health or family or relationships or prosperity?

That junk is a picture of our selves. This is everything we cling to when we don't give our hearts to God and let Him have control. We can live in a shack with all of our stuff, or we can move into the mansion that Jesus said He is preparing for us. We "sacrifice" our worthless garbage in exchange for His limitless riches. Isn't it funny how we consider that a sacrifice? Like we're actually giving something up?

No; it's a silly notion to consider surrender to God as if it were a sacrifice. There is nothing more valuable in this life or the next than God's presence. We have been given the enduring treasure of eternity in exchange for the hollow fiction of the temporal. We have been given something we can never lose in exchange for something we could never keep. We have been given the vast treasures of the Creator of the universe in exchange for the chaff and detritus the world thinks of as being meaningful or valuable.

What if the pipe were to say, "I do so little, I wish I could be more use." The reply would be "It is not you, but the water that passes through you, that saves and blesses. All you have to do is to see there is nothing to block the way so that the water cannot flow through." (God Calling, Nov 7)

What blocks the way? Only self. It is not a great thing that we do to take self out of God's way, but it is the best thing we *can* do. Jesus not only enables us get out of the way, but then He works through us when we have gotten out of the way by His grace. Then when we operate in love, His Spirit does works that span into eternity.

Matt 6:19-21 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."