Pleasing to the Lord

"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires fo the Spirit are against the flesh, for those are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law... And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."
- Galatians 5: 16-24

"But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I should myself be disqualified."
- 1 Corinthians 9:27

We cannot half-ass our lives as Christians. We cannot live partly surrendered and we cannot continue on with our own plans and goals and habits. This is an all or nothing commitment. This is a call to leave everything behind, including the clothes on your back. This is a call to consider everything as worthless, even your own life, in order to consider bringing glory to God as the only thing you are able to do.

Our lives are to be pleasing to the Lord. We should be living our lives, constantly aware of the coming judgement for Christians, when God will have us stand before Him and He will ask "What have you done for My kingdom?" Can you imagine the pain you will feel if all you can say is "I went to church" or "I got a biblical degree" . We, as Christians, are all children of God but let's not be the children who go off to college and never come back! Let's not be the children who create new lives for ourselves and occasionally call back home with updates!

We have to be serious about sin in our lives. We have to be serious about anything that keeps us from constant, glorious communion with Christ. If we allow any wrong attitudes, any wrong thinking, any selfishness than we allow Satan a foothold in our lives. Tolerance of sin in ourselves is not acceptable. That little thing that we don't regard as that big of a deal, that we refuse to surrender to Christ will not stay stagnant. It will grow, it will change, it will warp your thinking. Soon you won't recognize it as sin and it will rob you blind of everything. You won't have the relationship you are supposed to have with God and you won't bring Him glory and you won't do the work that He has assigned to you.

"If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell."
- Matthew 5:30

Don't you understand? That one little thing, whatever it is, is not worth losing any closeness with Christ. It's not worth it to be separated from Christ! I beat my body and make it my slave, for I will not be stopped by my own flesh. I will not be kept from a continued relationship with my Husband.

It requires a conscious decision and effor tto keep our primary goal constantly in front of us. It means holding yourselves to the highest priority year in and year out; not making our first priority to win souls, or to establish churches, or to have revivals, but seeking only "to be well pleasing to Him"... any goal we have that diverts us even the slightest degree from the central goal of being "approved to God" (2 Timothy 2:15) may result in our rejection from further service for Him.
- Oswald Chambers

It is my greatest fear that I will not be able to be used by Christ. That I will not be ready for Him to speak through, to send out because I was selfish, because I clung to my one little thought or habit or whatever instead of surrendering completely to Him.

We don't stumble into closeness with Christ. You can't go through the motions, fill out your Christian checklist, and work your way up to a "usable Christian". You have to work at it every day, wrestle yourself to the ground every morning and surrender to Christ, throw up the white flag and let go of EVERYTHING. Your goal has to be utter surrender for the purpose of being a vessel that He can fill with Himself. Don't you know that there is no greater joy, than to know that you are pleasing to Him? Don't you know that whatever it is that you don't want to surrender, it CAN'T COMPARE to a simple glance from His holy face?

What is your goal in life? What do you strive for? What do you work towards? What do you surrender? Where does your allegiance lie, really and truly?