Martin was right. There are others out there struggling with these passages and the flesh – My will vs. the Lord’s will. I for one struggle with this daily, this is a great article and worth the read and contemplation through prayer. It will bring an immediate, Amen, from those that do struggle with it daily and for those of you that don’t my question is why aren’t you. Hopefully, it is because you have cracked the code on death of self and are doing the Lord’s will freely in your life, but if that is not the case, may this article plant the seed in your mind that the Holy Spirit can make grow…
Maranatha Lord, come quickly!
-myblessedhope
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By Martin Irish
“A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready. ‘But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’
And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’
And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’” ─Luke 14:16-24 NKJV
There is a problem I have been struggling with and since the Bible says that there is no temptation that we have experienced except that which is common to man (1 Corinthians 10:13), then I think it is a safe bet to say that there are others who struggle with it too. The struggle that I am talking about has to do with the inner fight to lay down our own desires, hopes, and dreams; and to deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily, and follow Jesus.
Let’s be honest for a minute, and just admit that it is not an easy thing to die to self. The Bible says in Romans chapter twelve that we are to present ourselves as a living sacrifice to God, but someone once said that the problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar. Humorous as that may be, it is also a true and sobering fact that we must continually offer up our lives and be diligent to remain in a state of submission to our sovereign Lord on a daily basis. Let me see if I can bring this closer to home and illustrate it from my own life.
In January of 2011, I met this beautiful, spirited, and loving lady whom I fell in love with and she with me. Between the time that we met and were married, I started to have the Scripture verse above run through my head, or more accurately just a portion of it. The part that kept coming to mind was, “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.” But what it was going through my head about differed from the words of Jesus; for I did not seem to be declining to come to the Master’s banquet, but rather I was making an excuse as to why I could not obey His command to labor in His field for harvest time.
myBlessedHope 