Reading from My Utmost for His Highest.... :)
Christ-Awareness
Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.
A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.
If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me . . . and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.
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Then, the reading from the Vine today talks about the similar things.. so cool...
Wednesday, August 21st
Here's Today's Devotional from The Vine...
Jesus called a little child to himself, and set him in the midst of them. -Matthew 18:2
The child preached the sermon. It said to those ambitious disciples, “Shame on all you quarreling about prominence and high places. Look at me. I am much higher up in the kingdom of heaven than you. You must get clear of all your proud thoughts and become humble and simple-minded and childlike, or in the new kingdom you will have no place at all, much less a high place.” Little children are all preaching sermons to us, if only we have ears to hear. In their innocence, simplicity, and nature, children exert an influence upon other lives which no words can describe. They are at once the greatest preachers and themselves the most eloquent sermons.
This picture of Jesus with the little one in His arms is very beautiful. In all the Bible there is scarcely another which so well represents the attitude both of the soul and of the Savior in salvation and in all Christian life. Jesus takes the child in His arms: there is love, tenderness, protection. Close to Jesus we find the place of warmth, affection, intimacy, and confidence. The encircling arms imply safety, support, shelter. He lifted up the child and held it in His arms; so He carries His people through this world. He does not merely tell them how to go, but He takes them on His shoulders, carrying not only their burdens, but themselves. In this way He bears them on through life and through death.
Look at the picture another way - the child in the Savior's arms. Its attitude speaks of trust, confidence, repose, peace, love, and joy -- just the feelings which belong to the true Christian. What safety we find when we're close to Christ in danger, storm, sorrow, and even death! We need to learn to nestle in our Savior's arms in all the experiences of life!
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God is so good to me!.. reminding me about trusting Him like a child trusts her father.. *beam* and recently, a dear friend sent me a picture of a father playing with his daughter which reminds me of how Heavenly Daddy playing with me! wheeeeee!.. :)
Sweet... :)
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