Recovery Devotional 289 Halted

JMD Devotional 289 1 Kings 18:21 Halted

Elijah came near to all the people and said, How long will you halt and limp between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him! But if Baal, then follow him. And the people did not answer him a word.

People are stubbornly double-minded. Perhaps we have invested so much in our worldly way of doing things, in our dead works, that we still have a glimmer of retched hope that somehow we will get a dividend other than death from sin. God does not like us to be straddling the fence: not only do we fail to apprehend His power and presence in our lives; but we display a confusing witness. Hypocrisy is one of the most distained epitaphs of professed Christianity; even the lost world expects us to be consistent and genuine. Anything less than authentic is a farce; Jesus shed real blood for real converts. In my personal struggle to defeat a nagging double-mindedness that threatened to undo my early recovery, God gave me a triad of principles that have proved invaluable to keeping me authentically centered in Christ.

I am to be fully committed, completely yielded, and totally dependent upon God.

That is to be fully committed to the cause of Christ and the Kingdom of God, completely yielded to His will for my life, and totally dependent on His Holy Spirit’s power working in me what I cannot do for myself. The balance of these three sustain the triad; something I do as an exertion of my will, something I yield to, and a relationship that makes me a partner to a power outside of myself.

Dear God,

Thank You for showing me that the essence of sin is my tendency to live my life independently of You. Thank You that I was never meant to live so isolated and alone; may You be a part of everything and everywhere I am. Rule me, lead me, sustain me, renew me; and help me escape from the tyranny of self to become truly Christ-centered.

Amen

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the Lockman Foundation. (AMP)

Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation

*New International Version (NIV)

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

**Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. (Eugene Peterson's easy-to-read, contemporary Scripture translation)

I originally produced these blogs between 2006 and 2007, which were then published in my book, JMD Recovery Devotionals. In 2010, I am sending these out to a few people as I review them and see if my point of view has changed.

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