SURRENDER
BEGETS SATISFACTION
BREAD
2 This is what the LORD
says: “The people who survive the sword will find favor in the desert; I will
come to give rest to Israel.” 3 The
LORD appeared to us in the past,
saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with
loving-kindness. 4 I will build you
up again and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your
tambourines and go out to dance with the joyful. Jeremiah
31:2-4 (NIV)
3 Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify
you. 4 I will praise you as long as
I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands. 5
My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with
singing lips my mouth will praise you. 6 On
my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. 7 Because you are my help, I sing in the
shadow of your wings. 8 My soul
clings to you; your right hand upholds me. Psalm
63:3-8 (NIV)
23 Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he
must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet
lose or forfeit his very self?” Luke 9:23-25 (NIV)
10 Jesus
answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it
is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given
you living water.” 11 “Sir,”
the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can
you get this living water? 12 Are
you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it
himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” 13 Jesus answered, “Everyone
who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks
the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will
become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:10-14 (NIV)
10 The thief comes only to steal
and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the
full. John 10:10 (NIV)
14 For
Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and
therefore all died. 15 And he
died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for
him who died for them and was raised again.
2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NIV)
20 I
eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have
sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body,
whether by life or by death. 21 For
to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:20-21 (NIV)
20 I have been
crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I
live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me. Galatians 2:20 (NIV)
28 Peter said
to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!” 29
“I tell you
the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has
left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the
kingdom of God 30 will fail
to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal
life.” Luke 18:28-30 (NIV)
7 But whatever was
to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose
sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from
the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that
comes from God and is by faith. Philippians 3:7-9 (NIV)
BUTTER
“Where
is God presently moving us from slavery to freedom? We are to lay behind all which ensnares and
enslaves us. We believe this doctrinally
but often functionally we forget and continue to wallow about in the mire
wrapped in our chains. Am I disobedient
to the high heavenly vision and command of freedom in Christ? Or am I devoted to my enslavement instead of
my Lord? God desires to satisfy what
that enslavement can never do – the deepest hungers of our hearts.” BHY
“Jesus
must become the still point of our turning world, the center around which our
entire life revolves.” Tim Keller
“Life is
a battle against delighting in anything more than we delight in Him.” John Piper
“This crisis of faith sent grasping
hands in search of His loving grip.
Wrestling in this wasteland led me to know God in a deeper way. Day by day I came to trust the kind of love
that never fails and never leaves. And
this same love is yours in Christ too.
Even when we’re afraid.” Jolene
Underwood
“The
greatness of a man’s power is the measure of his surrender.” William
Booth
“The condition for
gaining God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him.” Andrew Murray
“What you
think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift. And I think of
everything I have chaffed against and railed about and howled to the heavens
and who am I to know what is best or not — but when
you bow and surrender to the sovereignty of God then you are in the posture to
receive all as a gift.” Ann Voskamp
“If we truly understand God’s
economy, we will realize that our sacrifices are not really sacrifices at
all. The Lord will always bless the
fully surrendered sacrifice.” Michael
Youssef
“God has allowed
it. It’s working something in our hearts. It’s growing us as Christians. It’s
softening our hearts. It’s preparing us
for Heaven. God won’t waste our sorrows.
He’s the best recycler of all. Everything is used by Him. Nothing is thrown
away or wasted in our lives. He uses every small and great tear . . . every
fear . . . every sorrow.” Cathe Laurie
“He
who is a believer in Jesus finds enough in his Lord to satisfy him now, and to
content him for evermore. The believer
is not the man whose days are weary for want of comfort, and whose nights are
long from absence of heart-cheering thought, for he finds in Christ such a
spring of joy, such a fountain of consolation, that he is content and
happy. Put him in a dungeon and he will
find good company; place him in a barren wilderness, he will eat the bread of
heaven; drive him away from friendship, he will meet the ‘friend that sticketh
closer than a brother.’ Blast all his
gourds, and he will find shadow beneath the Rock of Ages; sap the foundation of
his earthly hopes, but his heart will still be fixed, trusting in the
Lord. The heart is as insatiable as the
grave till Jesus enters it, and then it is a cup full to overflowing. There is such a fullness in Christ that He
alone is the believer’s all. The true
saint is so completely satisfied with the all-sufficiency of Jesus that he
thirsts no more – except it be for deeper draughts of the living fountain.” Charles H. Spurgeon
“If you are thirsty in this life you have gone to the
wrong well.” BHY
“Because I love you, I’m asking you to guard your heart from anyone or
anything that can steal you away from Me. Remember, My love, this world offers
a counterfeit Life that will never fulfill you. What I create for you will
satisfy your soul; what the enemy offers will satisfy your flesh for a while.
However, in the end the world’s way leads to destruction. If your heart wanders
and you are not equipped with My Word, you will be unable to discern the
difference between real faith and counterfeit religion.” Sheri Rose Shepherd
“Amid all this chaos of a confused, sick society, Christ comes quietly as of old and invites us to come to Him. He invites us to follow Him. He invites us to put our confidence in Him. For He it is who best knows how we can be satisfied. He knows that the human heart, the human personality, the human soul with its amazing capacity for God can never be satisfied with a substitute. Only the Spirit and life of Christ Himself will satisfy the thirsting soul.” Phillip Keller
“Amid all this chaos of a confused, sick society, Christ comes quietly as of old and invites us to come to Him. He invites us to follow Him. He invites us to put our confidence in Him. For He it is who best knows how we can be satisfied. He knows that the human heart, the human personality, the human soul with its amazing capacity for God can never be satisfied with a substitute. Only the Spirit and life of Christ Himself will satisfy the thirsting soul.” Phillip Keller
“Inauspiciously, a prayer meeting in Antioch in Acts 13:1-3 became one
of the most important moments in the history of the world. With their prayers
and fasting, the church leaders said, God, we want your provision, not our
small plans. We want your abundance, not our small-mindedness. We want more
than we know how to ask, more than we can think, more than we could expect,
more than we can dream. We want you, God. We’re not satisfied with abilities
and experience and what we can plan on our own and do apart from you. We want
you and your leading. We don’t want to lean on our own understanding.” David Mathis
“Pleasure can breed disproportion in us. We
chase small pleasures into the trap of thinking that life is really about small
pleasures — food, sex, shopping, even friendship, marriage, and parenting. We
end up trying to carve a god out of our small pleasures instead of following
each one up to the greatest Pleasure. Every
temporary good — and they are all temporary here on earth — is an appetizer for
the eternal. Now ‘we know in part . . . but when the perfect comes, the partial
will pass away’ ( 1 Corinthians 13:9-10). The partial was always meant to
prepare us for something perfect — someone who could satisfy us completely,
someone who could make us perfectly and invincibly happy.” Marshall Segal
“Desire only God, and your heart will be satisfied.” Augustine
HEART SAVOR
·
Don’t
seek to be satisfied with the created rather the Creator. It won’t happen. He alone overflows our cups. He is our sufficiency, He is our strength, He
is our fullness of joy.
·
If we are
His, we are crucified with Him meaning our lives are on the altar. We are to be living sacrifices. The only problem with a living sacrifice is
that it all too often crawls off the altar!
It is no longer to be my way or the highway, rather it is to be His way
of overflowing abundance. It is certainly
not without cost or pain – conforming us into the image of His Son can place us
in circumstances far beyond our ability to endure. Yet He allows these to happen that we will
not rely on self but Him Who raises the dead.
We die to self we gain abundant life in Christ. It’s really a no-brainer. We are the fools if we fail in this so great
an endeavor. It is taking hold of life
that is truly life.
·
God is
the great Giver in all things. He never
takes that He does not abundantly give.
We will never out give God.
