GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 6

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

  JESUS, YOU…….GAVE ME THE RICHES OF YOUR GLORY AS AN INHERITANCE –Ephesians 1:19 

JESUS, YOU………BLESSED ME WITH ALL SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN HEAVENLY PLACES –Ephesians 1:3 (ALL!)

JESUS, YOU……… ARE WITH ME WHEREVER I GO –Joshua 1:9      (A good one to write out entire verse and   keep in your car)

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

Romans 7:18 ~ ~ “ For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.”

We’re reading from “Abide in Christ” by Andrew Murray, a classic book written in the 1800’s

(He is speaking of grafting a new branch into an existing tree.  When we understand that Christ died for each of us, to make our spirits alive, connecting with the God of all things, and to pay the price for our sins, so that we don’t have to pay that price, and if we have given our life to Jesus wholly,  this parable that Christ taught about the grafting of the branch into the vine, in John chapter 15, becomes very powerful in our lives, especially as Pastor Murray explains it.):

Here I have a tree entirely renewed – an emblem of the Christian who has learned in entire consecration to surrender everything for Christ and, in a wholehearted faith, to abide wholly in Him.

If, in the last case, the old tree were a reasonable being that could cooperate with the gardener, what would the language spoken to it be?  Would it not be this:  “Yield yourself now entirely to this new nature with which I have invested you; repress every tendency of the old nature to give buds or sprouts ; let all your sap and all your life powers rise up into this graft from yonder beautiful tree, which I have put on you; so will you bring forth sweet and much fruit.”

And the language of the tree to the gardener would be: “When you graft me in, spare not a single branch; let everything of the old self, even the smaller bud, be destroyed, that I may no longer live in my own, but in that other life that was cut off and brought and put upon me, that I might be wholly new and good.”

And, once again, could you afterward ask the renewed tree, as it was bearing abundant fruit, what it could say of itself, its answer would be like this:

“In me, that is, in my roots, there dwells no good thing (Romans 7:18—our verse for today above), I am ever inclined to evil; the sap I collect from the soil is in its nature corrupt and ready to show itself in bearing evil fruit.  But just when the sap rises into the sunshine to ripen the fruit, the wise gardener has clothed me with a new life, through which my sap is purified and all my powers are renewed to the bringing forth of good fruit.  I have only to abide in that which I have received.  He cares for the Immediate repression and removal of every bud that the old nature still would put forth.”

Christian, do not fear to claim God’s promises to make you holy.  Do not listen to the suggestion that the corruption of your old nature would render holiness an impossibility.  In your flesh dwells no good thing, and that flesh, though crucified with Christ, is not yet dead, but will continually seek to rise and lead you to evil.

But the “Father is the husbandman (gardener)”  (John 15:1), and He has grafted the life of Christ in your life.  That holy life is mightier than your evil life; under the watchful care of the Husbandman, the new life can keep down the workings of the evil life within you.

 The evil nature is there, with its unchanged tendency to rise up and show itself.  But the new nature is there too – the living Christ, your sanctification, is there – and through Him all your powers can be sanctified as they rise into life and be made to bear fruit to the glory of the Father.

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