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When we become born again we know something real happened. Something strikes within us and it is real, the new life has entered in. We know that we have become a new creation and we come alive. Our hearts instantly begin to burn within us when we read His word. We find that we cannot stop praying and looking towards heaven within our hearts. We run in the path of His commandments like the wind. We fall seven times and rise again, and year after year we grow up in Him. We grow as cedars of Lebanon stretching forth our branches to heaven, bearing fruit in old age. During these years, we are exercising ourselves unto Godliness, denying ourselves, and picking up our crosses daily, and follow Him.
In this narrow way, we have found that way is the surrendered life to Jesus Christ. The longer we stay on that way, the more deaths we die on our crosses. I believe that mostly what we die from is the result of persecution, which brings rejection, loss of who we thought were friends, members of households becoming our worst enemies, and all forms, and degrees of meanness and abuse. A time comes in a life surrendered to Christ, that it is a life of death. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."
As true Believers we take a lot of persecution, and we do so because we seek to not "repay evil for evil." We chose "not to let our good be evil spoken of." We choose from our burning hearts to obey Jesus when He says, "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
But there comes a time where something strikes within us, and like Paul in 2 Corinthians chapters 10 and 11, we see a picture of a man who owned his faith, calling and position Jesus called him into. Something struck Paul in these chapters as he confronts his contenders. One day he said, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." There is a spiritual maturity of ownership that is beautiful, free and strong.
These beautiful chapters show the maturity that each of us are to arrive to, and like Paul, something will strike you in your life. That striking within is something that causes you to stand up for yourself and tell it like it is in the firm power of a true servant and friend of Jesus Christ. And not to convince a person, or get them to like you, or defend yourself, but to declare your personal position of eternal faith like a valiant man or woman. There is something so powerfully, other-worldly about it. This is the unfading life of the born again saint purchased by the Blood of Jesus Christ who count not their lives dear to themselves, but only and evermore in Christ...."World without end."
Contact:
Email: jsfieldnotes@gmail.com
Website: www.joaniestahl.com
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