“You need to take stock of what you have used to replace intimacy with Me. What have you used to comfort yourself, instead of allowing Me to do a deeper work in your heart? Do you not know that you are working against Me when you do such things? I am fulfilling My promise by making you into the character of Jesus, while you are buying things that you really don’t need and taking on activities to make you feel better. How counterproductive is that?

"Observe why you are doing what you are doing. Compare it to what I would be doing to make you more like Jesus. Spend enough time with Me to know what is truth for your life. Submit to My hand upon you.”

II Samuel 14:14b NIV

“But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.”

Romans 2:4 NIV

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

Romans 5:1-5 NIV

1) Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

2) through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

3) Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;

4) perseverance, character; and character, hope.

5) And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

1 Cor. 13:11 AMP

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; now that I have become a man, I am done with childish ways and have put them aside.

I cringe when I attend evangelistic altar calls where the preacher promises health, wealth, and a trouble-free life if someone comes to Jesus. Usually, it is only a matter of time before a person who has responded to come to Christ for those reasons finds himself disenchanted, confused, and looking for other ways to soothe the need he has inside.

Our submission to Jesus as Lord should be for one reason and one reason alone. We are to submit to His Lordship because He is the only Lord, and we are created to love and serve Him.

Through the working and wooing of the Holy Spirit, we come to Jesus. Once we respond to that call, our lives are a continuous series of submissions to the hand of our Lord and changes that are completed in us because of those submissions. We are being made into the image of Christ. To do anything to fight against that process is actually working against God. No wonder we are so exhausted so much of the time!

I quit wanting my own way, Lord,

Jim Corbett