Say this by heart with me…then lean on God to live it out.
“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” Jas 4:7 NIV
My focus right in my life right now is to keep on growing into the image of Christ, so much that I am really putting this verse into action, more and more. Instead of reacting to whatever is happening around me, by His Grace, I am choosing to submit myself to God’s Way. These past three years or so, I allowed the devil to play havoc with my heart and mind. I was arguing with people about things that are here today and gone tomorrow…you know like masks and such. Again by God’s Grace, I finally got to the point where I said, “Wait, what am I doing here? I am submitting to the devil, imitating this corrupt world and defaulting to my old, wrong, selfish need to be right all the time. And what am I getting in return? Misery! No more! I want to be free, so I am going to allow others to be free to make their own choices as well!”
And so I have been submitting more and having more peace and joy too. And whenever I feel that old person trying to break through again, the Lord has me repeat this simple saying to myself, “I have no opinion, I just have compassion.” This doesn’t mean I am throwing out the baby with the bath water…in other words, I am still following God’s Word as closely as I can, but I am picking my battles…because after all, the battle belongs to God anyway. Hey that’s another verse we have added to our list, right? Remember 2Chron 20:15? Every time we choose to submit to God, He fights the battle for us, in and through us, because we are trusting Him to keep us at peace, to strengthen us with His Joy and to do the right thing that will, eventually, lead to the right results. Again, this does NOT come naturally to our old Self, so we must train ourselves to choose to submit to God. Training, this is just like that “working out our Salvation” verse we just talked about a couple of weeks ago…see how God’s Word all comes together for our good?
Join me in memorizing 52 verses this year:
January: 1- Jn 3:16; 2- 2Co 5:17; 3- Jas 2:26; 4- Eph 2:10
February: 5- Jn 10:10; 6- Ro 6:23; 7- Rev 21:4; 8- Php 4:13
March: 9- 1Pe 5:7; 10- Jn 8:32; 11- Dt 30:19; 12- Jn 3:30; 13- 2Chron 20:3
April: 14- 2Chron 20:12; 15- 2Chron 20:15b; 16- 2Chron 20:17
May: 17- Ro 8:28; 18- 1Co 13:13; 19- Php 2:12; 20- Mt 5:4
21- Lk 23:42
22- Jas 4:7
<>< Peace, Diane
