Pruning and Submission - part 21

Next, our passage says, "They must submit their own will to the will of God."  Here is where troubles begin.  "They must submit their own will to the will of God.  There will be a struggle with outward and internal obstacles.  There must ba a painful work of detchment as well as a work of attachment."  What must we be detached from?  Pride--that's the very first thing you see.  Remember, we read about this relationship as being, "entered into be a proud being," and so we are cut off from that old source of pride, cut off from th stalk from which pride grew.  And to pride, we can add, "selfishness, vanity, worldliness--sin in all its forms-must be overcome...."

There is only one way to overcome all of this, and that is to be cut off from it.  You must cut off the life source of pride, selfisihness, and sin in all of its forms--which is actually the world.  So we must be cut off from our love of the world.  That's why the Bible says that if we love the world, the love of the Father is not in us.  So we cannot compromise.  We cannot bring the world and the Lord Jesus Christ together; we cannot blend them, for they are diametrically opposed.  Any person who thinks the world can be held with one hand and the Lord Jesus Christ with the other hand, is fooling themselves and attempting an utter impossibility.

Reading further, "Pride, selfishness, vanity, worldliness--sin in all it forms-- must be overcome, if we would enter into a union with Christ.  The reason why many find the Christian life so deplorably hard, why they are so fickle- - - " what does the word fickle mean?  Changeable, unstable, saying one thing but doing another--"The reason..."I like statements that get right to the "this is it" nitty-gritty--"The reason why many find the Christian life so deplorably hard, why they are so fickle, so variable, is that they try to attach themselves to Christ without first detaching themselves from their Cherished idols."

Did this help you some?  I think I've been helped by it but will have to read it over, maybe even several times until I get the real message.  So don't feel bad about not getting it the first time, read it again and again until you do get it.  I hope you are being blessed, even if it is all new to you, God will bless us as we struggle to understand and apply it to our lives.  Grandma Joan