Wednesday, April 02, 2003
God is dealing with me. I am grateful because to ignore God and thus to be ignored by God is probably the closest thing to spiritual death in this life. I understand spiritual death to be eternal separation from God. I certainly don't want that for eternity and it is bad enough when, through my pride, neglect, or whatever, I let separation come between God and me in this life. But it DOES happen!
But not right now in my life, thank God. As I said, God is dealing with me and it isn't always pleasant! He is dealing with my prideful nature and prideful attitudes. He is also dealing with me in the area of my willful lustful sin of impurity. Ouch! Spiritual Surgery often hurts, but just as physical surgery is necessary to save a life, spiritual surgery is necessary to save a soul.
Through some parallels between physical and spiritual situations I am learning spiritual truths. God is showing me that I should be more concerned about the sin that grows in my life than the cancer that possibly is growing there. (We won't know about that until the awful, dreaded Colonoscopy May 12th.) But we know there is sin. John says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8). "If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives." (1 John 1:10)
I am grateful to my wife, Karon, and to my faithful prayer and accountability partner, Joel, for their place in helping me to "grow up in the Lord!" I don't know what I'd do without either one of them!! They are the two most precious people to me in this life!!
I KNOW there is the Cancer of Sin in my life, I don't have to wait for any tests to reveal that. God through His Word as revealed the sin nature and some of the specific sins in my life. But He has also given me freely of His Grace and His Salvation through His Son, Jesus, the Christ. So as I draw close to Him, God deals with the sin of pride and lustful temptations in my life. We'll wait for the results of further tests to see about any physcial cancer that might be growing and deal with that at that time.
God is apparently granting an opportunity to minister for Him in a special way at Countryside Christian Fellowship. We'll know for sure when the church votes April 13th. It seems Satan doesn't want that because he is waging spritual warfare. But, "The Battle Belongs To The Lord"!!
More than enough for tonight. Gotta head for bed!!
Jim
posted by jim 11:46 PM 0 comments
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