TO FINALLY SAY YES!

TO FINALLY SAY YES!

Rom 6:11-16

11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.

15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

          The writer of the above words is the same man who heard Jesus say: “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks” (Acts 26:14). The clear indication is that Paul had been giving some consideration to this new religion called Christianity. The Holy Spirit was moving him in one direction while he was kicking against those prods and stubbornly moving in rebellion.

          The waffling back and forth between faithful Christianity and selfish worldliness which we see today is almost without biblical precedent. Yes, John Mark walked away from ministry and then came back (Acts 15) and the prodigal finally came home (Luke 15) but we today we have people sitting in church listening to a message they never intend to obey. Life beyond the doors of the church seems to have no correlation with that single hour on Sunday morning.

          Oh, I was as guilty as any! In my late teen years I must have been terribly frustrating to my pastor. I would come to church and make great and public promises to follow God’s ways only to leave the church the same day, climb into my new Mustang and zoom off to pursue the urgings of the flesh. This continued until I was finally captured by the Holy Spirit and my heart was broken. I finally, yes finally, said yes to God and have never looked back.

          To finally say yes means also to finally say no. Paul said that he was “dead to sin” (Romans 6:11). This means to say no to the urgings of the flesh and the devil. A dead man does not respond to temptations. It also means to acknowledge the difficulties that normally accompany saying yes to God. Someone once said “We surrender not only what the Lord does to us, but we surrender our reactions to what he does.”

O Lord And Master Of Us All

Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight
And naked to Thy glance
Our secret sins are in the light
Of Thy pure countenance.

Yet weak and blinded though we be,
Thou dost our service own;
We bring our varying gifts to Thee,
And Thou rejectest none.

Dear Lord, let the struggling ones finally say yes to thee today. AMEN