Depending On That Which The Grace of God Never Gave Them

Do you find yourself still depending on you and not God? From what power reservoir do you draw? Too many times I find myself drawing on my natural abilities instead of Holy Spirit power. While reading Scripture this morning and seeing what the Lord would have me write, I came across a psalm I’ve never paid any attention to.

    “His foundation is in the holy mountains. The LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God! Selah. ‘I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know Me; behold, O Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia: ‘“This one was born there.”’ And of Zion it will be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her; and the Most High Himself shall establish her.’ The LORD will record, when He registers the peoples: ‘This one was born there.’ Selah. Both the singers and the players on instruments say, ‘All my springs are in you.’” (Psalm 87)

“All my springs are in you.” The NIV Bible renders “springs” as “fountains” and both words give off the idea of a well or a reservoir from which to draw. Psalm 87 is written as a song of praise, and David, while writing a song, also wrote of a fountain:

    “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.” (Psalm 36:9)

I’m so often relying on my logic, pragmatism, and reason to walk through this world and make, at what are at times life-altering, decisions based on me and not the Bible. Why is that? The only real honest reason I can come up with is that I trust me more than God. I know, but I do.

And oh do I do the dumbest things when I do. That’s when my mouth starts writing checks my life can’t cash. Solomon tried to warn me against this:

    “The mouth of the righteous is a well of life, but violence covers the mouth of the wicked.” (Proverbs 10:11)

It comes down to righteousness, being right with the Lord Jesus Christ. Too many times I leave the house without being under the cover of prayer and Scripture and off I go into the world in my own power.

When I read the words “fountains” or “springs” I think of Jesus describing Himself as Living Water:

    “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’” (John 4:10)

We remember the woman at the well answering, “Sir, give me this water.” How come I rarely, if ever, say, “Jesus, give me this water”? Again it’s because I rely on my natural abilities instead of Jesus’ supernatural power. Oswald Chambers describes the process this way:

    “The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be. We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity. God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life which God has put in us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.”

THAT’S ME!!! I will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get me into contact with the life of Jesus Christ. When I read the Bible, when I pray, when the Holy Spirit sears my conscience over something I’ve done, that is God trying to get into contact with me. And what do I do? I go my own way.

The crazy part in all of this is I know that any good in me is Jesus’ alone. As Chambers say, I know that my natural virtues “can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants.”

So again why do I go my own way?

It’s because I am depending on that which the grace of God never gave me.

Lord Jesus may it not be so anymore in my life!

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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    Copyright © 2010 David Jeffers

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