SCRIPTURE PRINCIPLE:
And so dear brothers, I Plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living sacrifice, holy, the kind He can accept. When you think of what He has done for you, is this too much to ask? Rom. 12:1 (Living Bible)
KEY NUMBER SIX: Giving Up And Getting Out - Self-surrender
"I give up! Ever say that? Most of us have at one time or another for various reasons. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes it is out of sheer frustration. But sometimes out of sheer stubbornness, we won't give up at all and so we cause others to get angry with us.
It isn't easy to give up. We've got our pride. And pride wants to win, not give up. Pride wants us to hang on to what we've got. Our pride wants its way, even if it is hurting us. That's why God has to let us get our backs against the wall sometimes so that things get so unbearable far us that we finally say, "I give up!
Paul is calling upon us to give up in the Scripture reading for this KEY. But there's a better word for it - SELF-SURRENDER. Surrendering ourselves to the Lord. Giving up on our own way of doing things and telling God we are ready and willing to do everything His way.
This is hard! We don't want to surrender our bodies to God. We want to use them in our own way. We just can't give up our homosexual feeling and all that goes with them. We'd like to give up the hurts and the bad scenes, but not the fleeting thrills. That's hard! That's impossible! That's expecting too much.
God doesn't tell us it will be easy. In fact, we are told in our passage that it will hurt. Aren't we called upon to make our bodies a living sacrifice to God? Sacrifices hurt. Some sacrifices lead to death. Jesus's sacrifice did. But God doesn't want us dead, He want us alive.
The sacrifices we are to make are to resist the devil and say no to temptation. We are to endure the withdrawal symptoms from homosexuality. Withdrawal symptoms always cause pain. But God asks us to go through the pain.
We can do it. He promises to help us. The Holy Spirit will help us. God's promise is: 'RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU.' James 4:7. Do not say that what God tells you to do, you are unable to do. Ask Him for the power to say 'NO'.
Being a Christian does not make it easy to do God's will. Even Jesus found it hard. Remember how He prayed in the Garden of the Lord to take away the cross from His life? Three times He asked for it to be removed. Three times God refused. So, finally Jesus said '...NEVERTHELESS, NOT WHAT I WILL, BUT WHAT THOU WILT.' And He went to die on the cross for you.
So, when we say it is too hard and that God is asking too much of us to resist and say no to our temptations; let us remember what Jesus did for us and the struggles He went through for us. Is that asking too much from us then?
He didn't have any sins to pay for. He didn't have to hang on the cross if He hadn't wanted to. But He loved us so much that He surrendered His whole body to the Lord. He put up with great agony so that we could be free. Jesus gave up His life when He surrendered to His Father. We only give up the chains that bind us when we surrender. Ready to surrender?
<-- SWORD OF THE SPIRIT -->
Proverbs 29:16
Romans 6:2
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK
Our Father, Who has set a restlessness in our hearts and made us all seekers after that which we can never fully find - keep us at tasks too hard for us, that we may be driven to Thee for strength. Amen.
WORDS OF HOPE AND HELP:
Mark 14:32-42 Philippians 3:7
