Gritty, deliberate obedience

"Hearing the testimonies from the Persecuted Church we are confronted countless times with the challenge that the Gospel is worth living for. Once you find something like that it changes the way you live. This is it, the gauntlet is laid down. Dare we pick it up? Dare we surrender our lives into the hands of God that something of eternal significance can be worked through us?"

"The Persecuted Church isn't all excitement and emotion; it isn't the romance that we often believe - reciting the Bible cover to cover from memory and sea-parting faith. It's gritty, deliberate obedience, choosing God's will even if it costs them their status, credibility, job, family, freedom. life."

"Where did they learn this lesson from; this counter-culture learning? From Jesus Himself who did only what the Father showed Him and spoke only what the Father told Him (see John 5:19 and 8:28). Nowhere is His obedience to the will of the Father made more evident than when in Gethsemane. He knew what suffering was ahead of Him and He prayed, 'My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. YET NOT AS I WILL, BUT AS YOU WILL.' It was a cold, deliberate choice for Jesus to be obedient. And that's where it starts for us. Choice by choice, foregoing what we want for what the Father wants."

Source: Crossrhythms

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