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InTheLight
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Joined: 2003/7/31
Posts: 2850
Phoenix, Arizona USA

 The Path to Victory

Only Jesus can take away sin. But just as sure as power went out of His earthly life to everyone that touched the hem of His garment, so will that power come from His glorified life to all who trust Him. When we bow before Him in humility, meekness, patience, we prove we consent to death to self and that it's utterly sinful and impotent. Then we set our hope in Christ alone. All who persevere in the path of humiliation and self emptying, will know there is a difference. That person will sooner or later experience the victory of the life of Christ triumphing over that life of self.

Death to self means a total despair of any spiritual help from that angle. It means to give up any thought of having or doing anything that is good in any other way but that meek and humble spirit that totally resigns itself to God. All we do in religion without this conviction is in ignorance of what we are and is often rather the light than death to self. When we are ashamed or vexed at our own pride, it's simply because we expected something better of ourselves. When we condemn ourselves for being angry, it is the hope we won't do it again. When we purpose not to sin, it's a secret hope by our resolve and strength of will that we won't do it again. All of this is the life of self, and if we have the slightest degree of success, it will produce a pride that will look down on those who are not so strong every time. We must be brought to an inward conviction that we may as well attempt to fly without wings as to conquer sin or self in our own strength.

Now this conviction alone will bring us into that entire dependence on God, and that simple faith in Jesus Christ will absolutely produce the victory over this self. God must do all or all is nothing. God can't do all until all is expected of God. He doesn't ask your help, He asks your submission. We will never expect all from God until we totally despair of human help. We must be brought to that place where we have no hope, trust or longing but a patient, meek, humble resignation of all to God. We must by revelation come to know there is no true good but what God works Himself. The one thing God expects of man is faith and that man expects all goodness from Him alone. The one hindrance to that faith is the lack of that meek, humble lowly nature of the Lamb of God who was in total resignation to His Father. It's the lack of this nature that gives self His place in the believer and the church. Every failure in the Christian life, every outbreak of evil temper, every disappointment because our prayers and efforts seem to avail so little is the result of a secret trust that we've placed in the power of this self. Now to be delivered from this power, we must embrace the Lamb of God, with His meekness and lowliness, and to wait before Him in patience and total dependence upon God.

-B.H. Clendennen


_________________
Ron Halverson

 2010/7/11 15:56Profile





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