LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional
April 22 / Day 54
365 Prayers to JESUS
Jesus, Lord, my Redeemer, all praise to You for it is amazing to see how You have worked in my life through these prayers that I have been praying daily for over twelve years now. Some days as I read the first prayers written in my 2004 journal for the same day twelve years ago I can see Your Hand, Your Grace, Your Mercy, and in 2016 You are showing me how You have taught me and I can more clearly see the lesson You intended but it has taken all these years to develop my “Spiritual Discipline” to the point that my “Faith is becoming sight” and my “Spiritual Discipline is becoming discernment”. Jesus, on this day in 2004 the Holy Spirit was guiding my prayers and led me to write this question: “Lord, are you trying to teach me that it is my choices that determine who I am and who I will be and that how I choose to live and act should not be influenced by how others live and act, but that I should use my Free Will to choose how to live based on what I want my life to be and not what others tell me how to live?” Lord Jesus, today in 2016 I praise You that I am now understanding that if I indeed choose to live my life as Your disciple that whatever happens in “the world” has no bearing or impact on who I am nor on my final destination. Lord, I pray that You will continue to teach me “Spiritual self-discipline” for Lord it is my humble desire to “learn from the Master”!
The Jesus Questions
JQ#11 — Before moving to the next “Jesus Question” the Holy Spirit is leading me to share the APRIL 22 selection from my Oswald Chambers Daily Journal “My Utmost for His Highest” that I read every morning to start my devotionals and Bible Study. To be honest with you, I did not write for many years because my thoughts were that there are so many good writers like Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tower, and C.S. Lewis just to name a few, plus great daily devotionals like Charles Stanley, Daily Bread, Guiding Light, and Adrian Rogers that I felt there was no need to add more written words about Jesus. But now I know that Jesus is Worthy of All Praise and that His Glory cannot be written even if every believer wrote every thought and answered prayer about Jesus! In other words there are not enough words to give Jesus the Praise, Glory, and Honor He deserves! I have now been writing for several years and I know that my writing is insignificant but who I am writing about is not and today I am led to share in my writing some grand thoughts written by Oswald Chambers titled “The LIGHT That Never Fails” APRIL 22: “We must build our faith not on fading lights but on the Light that never fails. When ‘important’ individuals go away we are sad, until we see that they are meant to go, so that only one thing is left for us to do — to look into the face of God for ourselves. Allow nothing to keep you from looking with strong determination into the face of God regarding yourself and your doctrine…A Christian servant is one who perpetually looks into the face of God …the ministry of Christ is characterized by [His] abiding glory…the secrets of [the life of a disciple of Christ] is that [the disciple] stays in tune with God all the time.” After I read this passage in 2004 I realized that in my prayer that same day that I had written “teach me the proper self discipline to love others like Christ at all times, regardless of how I am treated by others” and this passage to me was the Holy Spirit answering me and saying “the secret to being like Christ is to focus on Him all the time and you will learn Spiritual Self Discipline which is what allowed Jesus to suffer the cross for sinners!” This lesson of “Spiritual Self Discipline” is important as we continue studying the Word in order to learn the lessons the Master is teaching.
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