Stop trying!

Today’s scripture:

“And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever- the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.” (John 14:16-18)

Do you ever wonder why you keep falling? Why you keep giving over to that same old sin over and over and over? Why is it the more you try, the harder it seems to not give over to sin? Well, the obvious answer to that question is simple. You are trying to do it in your own strength. Yes, I know that is a fundamental answer to a typical question in the pursuit of living for Jesus, but the purpose of this devotion is to dive in deep to the core of surrender and pleasing our Father in heaven.

See, many people, and I include myself, tend to think that we need to please God. People have the mindset that we shouldn’t think this way or that way or that will lead us to sin. But it is true. We do need to please God and we do need to watch what we participate in that it will not lead us astray. But, I think the problem is how we go about it… We try and fall, we try and fall, we try and try and TRY!

May I say something that may be contrary to how people think? STOP TRYING!  Stop TRYING to please God that way! Stop trying to not sin. Yep, you heard me right. What??? How can this be God’s will? You were never meant to try and not sin. And believe it or not you were never meant to fundamentally surrender and give it to God. At least not that it would end there.

Dear saints, please understand we tend to think in a way that can be very shallow. Very into ourselves even when we are thinking we are trying to please God. If it were to stop there, the Lord Jesus would be greatly saddened and His heart would ache. See, Jesus longs for a closeness with you. What Jesus really wants from you is YOU. He longs for you. Stop trying to not do certain things and just spend time with Him. And you know what? As you do, your spirit dwells with His spirit and that’s where you are united with Him becoming one. And as you dwell with Him, all that stuff about trying to not sin will fall into place naturally! It’s in possible to dwell in His presence and sin at the same time.

This does not mean you have to stop whatever you’re doing and fall prostrate at His feet. There is a time and place for that but I believe we don’t come to Him sometimes because we feel we have to give up so much of our time. Remember, God knows you have work and chores at home and you have kids and have to prepare dinner. He knows all that. He wants to be invited into all of that while you do it thanking Him, praising Him, talking to Him like He is your earthly loving parent and friend. If you could just see beyond your eyes which are so blind to the spiritual world, you would see Him reaching out to you with arms and hands wide open pleading and saying with an almost weeping face “won’t you please spend time with Me? I want to give you so much more. I want to bless you with My peace, My joy and My strength but I can’t do that unless you let our spirit become one”.

Dear beloved, once you start spending time with Jesus by just thinking of Him and thanking Him continually, and even singing to Him, treating Him as if He were in the room with you trying to talk to you. Once you start that, stay there! Don’t leave! You may think this is impossible but you would be wrong according to 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19. God would not give us a command without giving us the power to live it out. It is possible to stay in His presence and never leave, in fact it’s a command. And as you practice this and fail miserably, keep pressing in when you realize you’ve been away from Him for some time and it will get easier and easier to where you will be in His presence more often than not being there. Then you come to a point that it’s easier to be with Him than not and you will realize all of your fleshly desires have weakened to the point of non-existence!

Reflection:

My lovely wife says, “Changing the way you think will change the way you act” (2 Corinthians 10:5). If we are to have victory in Jesus, we will need to be in His presence and staying there. There was a time recently that I thought I would always struggle with sin and that even though God calls us to a life of always pressing into Him, it still seemed unattainable in this life. But Jesus wants you to experience the fullness of Himself and we cannot have that if we are only giving Him a little bit of ourselves because then we will only get a little bit of Him.

Challenge:

I challenge you dear friends to set your mind on things above (Colossians 3:2, Romans 8:5). Start practicing the presence of God, and as you take tiny steps towards that He meets us the rest of the way. Just as a person trains his body to build muscle, lifting weights and getting better at it each day until he achieves the muscle mass he wants, you need to train your spirit to practice dwelling with Jesus every day even after you fail and you will get better at it then sin will start to weaken.

-Doug McGowan