WITH EVERYTHING, I WILL

The ability to withstand pressure, to absorb load, to be forged into strength through the fire, is determined by a revelation of personal identity.

Not a function or a position, it’s an identity.

You are not hired help.
You are a child of God.

You are a son, not a slave.
You are a daughter, not an underling.
You are royalty.

You loved and you are HIS.

While we see through the eyes of hirelings we are susceptible to frustration, counting hours, measuring load and burn out.  Instead of seeing the potential of diamonds, we feel only the heat and pressure applied.

But from the eyes of a child, an heir, a daughter or a son who knows the glory and the inheritance, there is simply no other life worth living. 

A child trusts – in the light, in the dark; on the mountain, in the valley; in abundance and in hopeful reliance.  At all times, a child trust and serves.

Withstanding pressure is a matter of obedience. 
Obedience is a matter of trust and dependence. 

Every step of the journey is blessed when you know you are cradled in the Father’s arms of Grace.  He is a good Father.  We have an assurance that greatness lays in wait for us.

When we know that our Father has our best interests at heart, when we know we are saved by Grace, and our lives are entirely His, then obedience sprouts out of a thankful dependence on Him.

Trust, surrender and obedience are responses to love.

Though now the pressures may come, though the cost may be great for a moment, we know whose we are.  From that knowing we rest under trial, we trust in the dark, we grow in the challenge. 

I am His and He is mine.

And so, I will. 
With everything, I will.

 

If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Luke 11:11-13 (NKJV)

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.  But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.  The hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care about the sheep.  I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.  As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.  And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.

“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”

John 10:11-18 (NKJV)

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors.

James 1:2-4 (MSG)

This was a blog originally written for the SWB CONFERENCE "DIAMONDS" being held next week in Brisbane, Australia

Click on the image to go to SWB website