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If there were nothing else to do but praise the Lord God with all your heart and voice, if you had never to eat, or drink, or sleep, but could praise God always and occupy yourself solely with spiritual pursuits, how much happier you would be than you are now, a slave to every necessity of the body!
–Thomas à Kempis

What a wonderful day that will be, when we are no longer a slave to the necessities of our physical bodies, and we are able to do nothing but praise God and pursue Him with no other distractions.

I long for the day when God will bring me to Himself, and I am able to experience the joy of praising Him that we see in Revelations which says that we will join with those who are around His throne:

and day and night they do not cease to say, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY is THE LORD GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, WHO WAS AND WHO IS AND WHO IS TO COME.” and “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created.”

What a glorious day that will be!
Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Yesterday, I wrote about surrendering all of yourself to Jesus. But does that truly mean dying to self? If I am faced with choosing life by denying Jesus or death by affirming my relationship to Him, should I really be expected to stand with Him and die?

    If being a Christian costs you your life, how with that help you make much of Christ? Many have made God look great through their death. When the hour comes for everything to be taken from us but Christ, we will magnify Him by saying: “In Him I have everything and more. To die is gain.” If we learn to die like that, we will be ready to live. And if we don’t learn this, we waste our lives.

    Some of us would be willing to die for Christ, the question is are we willing to live for Him, suffer for Him, and magnify Him with our lives.
–John Piper

Questions every follower of Christ must answer.
I hope you truly are able to say: To die is gain. To die for Christ would be an honor I do not deserve.
These were the beliefs of the apostles and of the martyrs of history. May we hold to the same beliefs.

A gospel-centered person is characterized less by the exemplification of certain personality traits and more by being united to the Person of Jesus. Our brief look at the Scriptures showed that God uses a variety of people from an assortment of backgrounds with differing skills and shortcomings to accomplish His work. He isn’t looking for a certain skill-set to employ; rather, He is looking for people who are united to the Son through His death and resurrection. Our gifting and skills are secondary to our union with Christ.
–Matt Chandler

More than your ability, God wants your availability.
Lay your “Yes” on the altar.
Give God a blank check and let Him fill in the blanks for your life.

These are just a few other ways I have heard the same idea. God wants total and complete surrender of you to Him. He wants you to declare like Isaiah: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

But too often, we are so focused on comfort and peace and security and self that we are unwilling to answer God’s calling for total surrender. Deny yourself. Die to yourself. Pick up your cross. Follow Me. These are the words that God uses to tell us to give every single thought over to Him, every single step over to Him, every single word over to Him, every single action over to Him.

Are you striving toward that?
Or have you become complacent in your spiritual growth, feeling that you have gone far enough with Jesus?

In 2016, I hope you will destroy all complacency in your life and become passionate about uniting with Christ in a way that radically transforms your thoughts, your speech, your attitude, and your actions.

Christmas is all about the Incarnation – the idea that God became a man.
Emmanuel… God with us!

When Jesus was in the boat on the water caught in a storm with His disciples, they cried out for Him to help them. They had no idea how powerful the One they were crying out to really was:

Jesus stood up and yelled into the wind and spray, “Quiet! Be still!” The disciples shrank back in terror. What kind of person could shout to the weather as if correcting an unruly child? The display of power in the midst of a storm helped convince the disciples that Jesus was unlike any other man. Yet it also hints at the depths of Incarnation. “God is vulnerable,” said the philosopher Jacques Maritain. Jesus had, after all, fallen asleep from sheer fatigue. Moreover, the Son of God was, but for this one instance of miracle, one of its victims: the creator of rain clouds was rained on, the maker of stars got hot and sweaty under the Palestine sun.
–Philip Yancey

The love exhibited through the Incarnation is hard to fathom, but the truth remains… God left the glory of Heaven to be born as an infant, to go through childhood and adolescence, to experience all the depths of humanity… so that He would be the proper sacrifice for humanity when He would later go to the cross.

Thank you God for the Incarnation.
Thank you God for Your great love.
Thank you God for Christmas!

How should you go about living today?
Live as though Christ died yesterday, rose from the grave today, and is coming back tomorrow.
–Theodore Epp

Jesus, help us to live in such a way that we are overwhelmed by Your sacrifice, overjoyed by Your resurrection, and overcome with delight at the very thought of You coming soon to bring us to Yourself!
May this be my heart’s cry today and every day from now until His return!