Day 21

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Day 21

Daily Surrender

October 22, 2022

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Day 21 Daily Surrender
Perhaps you were determined many times before that you would follow God, and then wandered. But at those times did you consider yourself dead to sin and alive through Jesus with respect to all of your choices in your life? Did you fully surrender your will? Did you resolve to no longer be your own, but to be totally Christ’s in every respect of your life for all time? Did you consider all things loss for Him? Phil 3:8 “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”
In Luke 9:23 Jesus tells us that if we want to be his disciple we must deny ourselves and “take up our cross” daily. There is a reason he put the word daily in there. You know how we humans are. But we should put ourselves on the altar daily as Romans 12:1 says to offer selves as living sacrifices. If we keep ourselves on the altar, He continues the work of sanctification. But we have a free will and if we choose to remove ourselves from the altar then we can easily start losing the battle to sin, idols, and the distractions of the world. When we yield our will to His, we get His results. We need to stay upon the altar and not let ourselves be slaves to sin again. Galatians 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
It is a matter of surrender, not effort. But it is a matter of entire surrender. Partial sacrifice would not be acceptable (and is partial really a sacrifice?) There are many who desire holiness but refuse to come to the altar on God’s terms. When we insist on coming to the altar on our own terms, we can’t experience God’s way. The only way to holiness is complete surrender to Jesus of our entire being in faith so that He may sanctify, and this surrender is a continuous act.
Lord, help me to entirely surrender to you. I want to want to completely be yours but I need your help with letting go of every part of me, every day between now and heaven. I can’t do it alone, help me to remember that I just need to let go and let you do it.

*In this devotional series some content may be summarized from the following sources:
Becoming A Holy People -Course offered at Northwest Nazarene University under Professor Weldon Shuman
A Plain Account of Christian Perfection -Rev John Wesley 1777
Healthy. Happy. Holy. 7 Practices toward a Holistic Life -By Joe Gorman; 2018 The Foundry.
Anatomy of the Soul -Curt Thompson, MD; 2010 Tyndale
Beliefs that Matter Most -W.T. Purkiser; 1959 Beacon Hill
*All Scripture quoted is NIV unless otherwise specified.

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Day 35

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Day 34

November 4, 2022 • Pastor Bill Kalina • Jeremiah 29:11–13

Day 34 HOPE and a Future If we could just understand that He never, ever, ever, ever, wants anything but the best for us, we would not hesitate to surrender all. Jeremiah 29:11-13 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” He knows us more than we know ourselves and he knows what tomorrow holds; -and we don’t, so we can trust His will and His decisions. We forget that he wants the best, that his plan is good (the best) and so we hesitate or even outright fight him on it, or just run the other way. We didn’t learn anything from Jonah, did we? When we realize that he only wants the best and he knows us better than we know ourselves, maybe then we can let go of our own ideas and plans and walk in his. Many times, we discover that we end up loving his plan better. When we let Him take us on His journey instead of ours, we find out more about ourselves than we ever knew. Plus, often His plan would have saved us heartache or disaster because He knows what is ahead. This doesn’t mean that we won’t have hard times, Jesus told us we would, but he is with us always and he overcame the world, so our victory is coming. See John 16:33. It is not at all about what we lose or give up, in time we will always gain more than we lose. Pray: Lord, I get caught up in what I have to give up, or get fixated on what I think is best, or what I think I want. Help me to remember your perfect love that ALWAYS wants what is best for me. Help me to surrender my desires and will into your perfect loving hands. Help me to embrace your plan for me, for my life, and for my future.

Day 33

November 3, 2022 • Pastor Bill Kalina • Romans 8:31–35, Romans 8:37–39

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