Monday, April 23, 2007

"Lord I believe! Help with my unbelief!"

E go to Christ for forgiveness, and then too often look to the law for power to fight our sins. Paul thus rebukes us, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Take your sins to Christ's cross, for the old man can only be crucified there: we are crucified with Him. The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear which pierced the side of Jesus. To give an illustration—you want to overcome an angry temper, how do you go to work? It is very possible you have never tried the right way of going to Jesus with it. How did I get salvation? I came to Jesus just as I was, and I trusted Him to save me. I must kill my angry temper in the same way? It is the only way in which I can ever kill it. I must go to the cross with it, and say to Jesus, "Lord, I trust Thee to deliver me from it." This is the only way to give it a death-blow. Are you covetous? Do you feel the world entangle you? You may struggle against this evil so long as you please, but if it be your besetting sin, you will never be delivered from it in any way but by the blood of Jesus. Take it to Christ. Tell Him, "Lord, I have trusted Thee, and Thy name is Jesus, for Thou dost save Thy people from their sins; Lord, this is one of my sins; save me from it!" Ordinances are nothing without Christ as a means of mortification. Your prayers, and your repentances, and your tears—the whole of them put together—are worth nothing apart from Him. "None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good;" or helpless saints either. You must be conquerors through Him who hath loved you, if conquerors at all. Our laurels must grow among His olives in Gethsemane. - Charles H. Spurgeon


The simplest of things is the hardest of things. I lose faith all the time and I forget how to have faith to begin with. I forget how to open my heart and love Jesus freely without struggle. The Christian life is the easiest and most wonderful life there is. The simplicity of it is what makes it so very, very complicated. Our minds corrupt the simple and good if we let it think on things too much. Faith, the simplest of simple. We use faith everyday. Trusting the wheels of our cars, the foundations of our homes, belts to hold our pants up...But trusting in Jesus with no doubting is the hardest thing in the world and is a constant work. Jesus summed up the Christian life very simple when people asked Him what they must do..

"What shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said, "This is the work of Him who sent Me, that you believe in the One whom He sent."

The work is to trust, to rest, to relax, to have faith and confidence in Jesus Christ and the power of His death and resurrection. Faith is more than saying "Lord, I am a sinner" or repeating the sinners prayer. Being saved from the penalty of sin is not saying words, nor is it being baptized. So, likewise, being saved from the power of sin is not doing things, but trusting in Christ Jesus our Lord.


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