Daily Devotional

Word of the Day

Outside Our Schedule

"For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Rom. 8:13). How do we lay aside every sin and weight? Is it going to be through asceticism? Is it going to be through temperance, which means me sitting down now and choosing these things? You can't even sit down and identify them; you will make mistakes. Through the Spirit you mortify the works of the flesh, Paul says in Romans 8. Don't start by looking at what you can stop or refrain from.

"I am going to stop this, and that will make me better over here."

No, begin to walk in the spirit, and you will no fulfill the lust of the flesh (Gal. 5:16). The Spirit will identify these things. As you draw nigh unto God, He will draw nigh unto you (James 4:8). Forget the successes and the failures. Realize the one thing in your life is to begin to embrace this cross. The first spiritual move you will make to walk in the spirit is denying self (not the physical being)--the self-man, the ego, selfishness. Make the quality decision to bow to the lordship of Jesus.

You say, "Well, I've done that. I'm a believer. I'm born-again. I understand that."

Are you consciously in every decision saying, "Lord, what would You have me to do?"

"When I get up in the morning, I prepare, I go to work, I get the kids ready, I clean the house..."

What if God has something else for you to do?

"Well, I keep waiting to hear that voice, 'Sleep in,' but I don't ever hear it."

We got so caught up in our schedules and our priorities and how things have to be done.

"Don't interrupt my schedule! This is how I do it, and this is when I do this. This is when I eat, this is when I exercise, this is when I go shopping, and this is when I go..."

What does God have to say about your life and your schedule? When was the last time you took off a day of work to pray, to go witnessing, or to refresh yourself spiritually? Have ears to hear or at least be open and ready. Understand how much you are bound by the natural man. Start listening to God, so that you can walk in the spirit, and then you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. But many of us don't even consider that. We expect God to speak to us and work outside our already established schedule. That's not how the men and women of Hebrews 11 lived. That's not how we are going to live if we will ever live free from this world, embrace the cross, and reprioritize our lives.

"But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof" (Rom. 13:14). That word "provision" means "plans, preparation or opportunity." How many plans are made for the secular and the temporal? What do you think you would do? Be truthful with yourself. How important is Psalms 119:63: "I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts"? Where would we be right now, living in the Lord, if we were left to ourselves? Then how much more do we need the influence of the cloud of witnesses, both historical and contemporary, to make it? We know all the principles. What I want to do is take it up a notch for each us. If we know that we can't make it on our own (and we know we can't), then shouldn't we evaluate the companions that we have and the environment that we are living in?

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