Determination

Ever kept saying to yourself ‘I need to do that’, ‘I will do that’, ‘I should do that’…But then stopped, didn’t act?

I have. Many, many…many…times. The trick is to do, rather than to say you will do. It’s something we all need to hear time and again, so that we’re spurred on to action, held accountable by friends or mentors. It seems, some days, that the will to do anything has left us; that we are apathetic, slothful, indolent, lazy.

That’s when we need to cry out the most. And cry out in conviction that we are heard, that our cries matter. We need to burn into our hearts the assurance of intercession, and that, my friends, is the hardest thing to do for many.

But the trick, as I say, is to do. Take hold of the things available to you. Wake up, as I need to wake up, and look and see that the Lord is present, and that he is Lord and Master. Get control of the things that enslave you, and become their master in Christ’s power. (I say this to convict myself as well as you). It’s a most liberating feeling, and it’s one of the things most worth fighting for.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Resolutions II

I’ve just downloaded a copy of Jonathan Edwards’ Resolutions…great stuff. You may remember I mentioned some in a previous post. What I might do is include one here and there as the year moves on, because just about every one of them is a fundamental point for the man of integrity. That’s just to let you know what’s happening when you occasionally see a post devoted to, for example, the ability or inability to live with “Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can”. This will not show up in this post, but you never know. It’s a pretty powerful one to live by. And the man wrote many of these in his nineteenth or twentieth year! That, my readers, is freaking amazing stuff if you ask me!

I’ve been thinking about the whole topic of resolutions, actually, and the binding conditions of life that they should be when we make them. We put so little stock in living lives worthy of the price of their purchase – Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Our resolutions do not bind us to improvement any more, because we justify breaking them by saying that they’re made to be broken. Faugh! What circular logic we practice in our attempts to justify our own wrongheartedness. Likewise, in disavowing that there exists the ability and the empowerment to live our lives bound in resolution and strengthened in assurance.

Resolved, then, as a good friend once wrote me: To pray as if it all depended on Christ and to live as if it all depended on us.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.