MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY
“I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before” Phil 3:13
Katrina was a good lesson in whether God reigned in my life or not. I’m not really sure I passed the test. We left at the last minute like everyone else I suppose, not prepared and having no idea of what lay ahead. I took all three of my kids, a daughter in law, grandchild, my two labs and found a cabin up in Alabama near Georgia. Leftovers from Katrina came up there and knocked the power out so unbeknown to us the levees broke in Nola. I remember taking the dogs running through this beautiful state park bawling my eyes out. The Lord begin to deal with me to surrender everything over to him. Funny how I so thought I had done did this! I needed a God encounter!
Andrew Murray said, “The motto of the Cape General Mission is, God first. In one sense that is a beautiful motto, and yet I am not always satisfied with it, because it is a motto that is often misunderstood. God first may mean “I” second, something else third, and something else fourth. God is thus first in order, but still God becomes one of a series of powers, and that is not the place God wants. The meaning of the words, “God first” is really “God all; God everything;” and that is what Christ wants. To be willing to give up everything, to submit to Christ and let him teach what to say and what to do, is the first mark of the man to whom Christ will come. Are you not ready to take this step and say: “Jesus! I do give up everything; I have given up everything; reveal Thyself.” Oh my gosh how does He desire to reveal Himself to us!
Well needless to say in the days, weeks and months and yes years ahead, God just kept wanting my all. The Apostle Paul called it the “one thing”. I believe what gets lost in translation is destiny. Somehow in the hustle and bustle, in the waking and sleeping we lose grasp with our destiny with God.
Murray goes onto to say, “We must come away from all the manifold and multifarious blessings that Jesus can bestow from time to time, to the blessed unity of that one— that Jesus makes Himself known, Jesus Himself is willing to make Himself known.” The most amazing thing that will happen in your life is that without the power of the Holy Spirit all of this is simply impossible. Christ comes when we are filled with Christ. Learning to be empty so He can fill us and overflow through us moves us into the realm of the impossible. Our job is to get hungry, and it’s not as simple as putting God first then us second or our families third. He is all consuming fire.