The greatest problem we have concerning Christ and His righteousness, and the one most likely misunderstood, concerns the part of man’s works in his righteousness and salvation. There are many ideas and questions about this.
In previous chapters we have attempted to eliminate the idea that people must perform some type of works in order to secure their own righteousness. We have tried to show how Christ is our righteousness. I am sure that, as we have been showing what Christ has done for us in righteousness and salvation, almost everyone has had at least one or two Bible texts or statements from the Spirit of Prophecy that causes them to have some reservation concerning what Christ does for us. Many want to cling to the idea that their works, at least to some degree, qualify them to be righteous.
There is no way to cover all the kinds of works that man does in Christian living, so we will limit our area of discussion to those works that have to do with victory over sin, and therefore are associated with righteousness. We are not talking about those works that are a consequence of grace and salvation, such as the works of appreciation and thanksgiving, the good deeds to others, and the like. We are talking primarily about the area of the works that lead to victory over sin. This is the area where we have the most difficulty and that we misunderstand so easily.
Certain texts are quite prominent when discussing this aspect of works. For example, Paul emphasizes that “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” Hebrews 12:4. There is another like it where Paul makes a parallel with Christians and those running a race. “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” 1 Corinthians 9:25. Since they deny themselves so much to win in a race, we ought to strive for mastery in the Christian life. By the way, the word translated here as “striveth” is limited to a specific kind of working. Strive means to fight. There is an agonizing struggle, an attainment or achievement, which requires much effort; but it is mainly talking about a fight or warfare in which we are involved.
This is illustrated where Paul wrote that we are to “Fight the good fight of faith…” 1 Timothy 6:12. When you begin to conceive of Christian works as a battle or warfare, you get a different concept than when you talk about struggling for some kind of supreme attainment. It is true that victory in warfare is an attainment, but it is a little different type than struggling for Christian perfection. The Bible often talks about striving and the warfare of Christian soldiers in the battle of life. This is the aspect we want to study here.
This is a difficult subject because every time you seek to define or describe the works of man in the struggle against sin, you always come very close to the works of God. In fact, the two are so intertwined that you cannot easily discuss one without the other. If you persist in reading what the Bible says about the works of man, you will discover that it always talks about the working of God. They are both intertwined and interrelated. We get into some difficulties when attempting to talk only about the works of man.
Let me show you how they are intertwined. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12,13. Most people stop reading after it says, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” But it goes on to say, “for it is God which worketh in you…” You cannot separate the two thoughts. When you try to separate the two ideas, you make a distortion of truth.
Here is another one: “Whereunto I also labour, striving according to His working, which worketh in me mightily.” Colossians 1:29. I work, He works, and He works in me.
With these thoughts in mind, let us try to isolate what are the works of man in seeking victory over sin. Again, this is a dangerous area because there is the danger of leaving out God and His works. And most of us do. We say, “I must do this apart from Him.” Be very careful when you come to that conclusion about any works of any person and at any time; because Jesus said that “without Me ye can do nothing.” John 15:5. And that means not one thing.
Nearly all the texts about man’s works in regard to victory over sin are essentially describing the same thing in a variety of ways. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24. This is talking about a unique type of effort, or struggle, or work in the Christian life. If you are going to be a disciple of Jesus, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him.
The same thought is stated in a different way: “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33. Here is that same denial which involves taking up your cross to follow Him. It is the same thought but differently expressed. Taking up your cross means you are going to die. Those who heard Jesus speak those words knew that when a person took up a cross, they were ready to be crucified on it.
All this is talking about the battle against self. We battle against Satan, and we battle against people; but our warfare is not with people. Some think that if they were married to a different spouse, or had a different job, or had different children, or lived in a different environment, they would not have the war. The Bible does not agree with that. Primarily the battle is with self.
Ellen White describes this warfare: “The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a struggle; but the soul must submit to God before it can be renewed in holiness.” SC 43. Surrendering all to God is our work, but do you see where God’s work comes into the picture? His work is in the renewing of man in holiness. The greatest war we must fight is not with Satan or other people, it is the submitting of the will to God.
This experience is well illustrated in the encounter that the rich young ruler had with Jesus; and we read it so casually sometimes that we miss the struggle and the unspoken aspect of it. There is much there that we leave out. “Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” Matthew 19:16. Jesus told him he must keep the commandments; and the young ruler asked which ones. Jesus named a few of the Ten Commandments to which the young man replied, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?” Picking up in verse 21, Jesus said, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow Me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto His disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
This man desired to follow Jesus, and he desired to be saved. He was looking at the finer points in his experience. He came seeking. He did a lot of things. In sincerity, he said he had kept all the commandments, but apparently he did not understand the spirit of them. So Christ told him what to do; but he would not go that far. Could he have done what Jesus told him to do? Was it impossible for him to give up his treasures and follow Jesus? Or was it possible? Or was he unwilling? Did Christ ask the impossible of this man? He never asks the impossible, does He?
Why was it so difficult to follow Jesus under those circumstances? Because riches have an attraction to self to this degree and extent. Christ was not exaggerating when He talked about the difficulty of the rich entering the kingdom. The richer you get, the more fearful and insecure you become. There is no security in wealth, but we all think there is. The ones who say they do not think so establish by lifestyle that they do think so. We attempt in many ways to provide for our security by possessions and wealth. Self is being attacked when you seek to remove that which, in our concepts, provides security. We do not like it when self comes under attack. We are adamant that we need our wealth to live. We may think we have more than enough to live, but we do not act that way when someone tries to take it away from us.
You can see the same battle in the experience of the prodigal son. We all know it very well, but let’s refresh our memories. “A certain man had two sons: And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” Luke 15:11-19.
You have to put yourself in his place. This man was on an ego trip that would never end. It was self, running wild with riotous living. Just spend, spend, spend. Doing your own thing, we call it. Spending what we have, and what we can borrow; but please don’t deny self. Take everything you want, even if someone else has to pay for it if you cannot, because self must be satisfied. How could that young man go so long and far in his selfishness? He reached the point where he would have gladly eaten the husks with the pigs. To a Jew, this was the lowest you could go. He had gone to the bottom of the gutter. How can you persist serving self until you arrive at the bottom? Why is it that we do not have more sense before we reach that point?
The answer is quite easy. Everyone says, “I want to do it. I want to achieve. Let me alone. I want to succeed.” When many know we are failures, and it is almost impossible to reverse the trend, we still say, “Let me show you I can do it.” We are everlastingly trying to show God we can do it in righteousness. We are not willing to admit that we are that much of a failure. We are still plunging headlong down into the gutter, waiting until we are disgustingly unfit for society. Yet we keep saying, “I am doing pretty well. Just give me time and I will show you.”
When you start to think about home and come to your senses (and nothing brings us to our senses better than the gutter), it is like being struck by a bolt of lightening. It half kills you before you realize anything. But why do we not arrive earlier at the conclusion to go home?
The fellow in the parable decided to go home. Would you like to have gone home as he did? He was a fellow who had gone out to do everything his own way, and knew exactly what he was going to do; and now he is going to go home and say he is a total failure. He went running home in dirty clothes, hungry and with no place to stay. Most would not want to go home once they reached that point. They would prefer to wait until they are fixed up and more of a success, and then go home and say, “Look what I have done.” What did this fellow have to brag about? He said to his father, “I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.” Most humans do not say that after they have been off on a long ego trip without a great deal of meditation and tremendous humiliation. You have to be in great need before you say you are no longer worthy. This was a prideful fellow. He knew exactly what it was all about.
This problem with self, this trauma that faces us, is so threatening that we do not even want to think about it. We resent anyone telling us about it. It makes us angry to hear sermons about it. So we choose the churches where we never hear it; and we choose to read Bible texts and read books where we never have to hear about it. We like to pat ourselves on the back and think that things are better than they are.
Jesus described this defeat of self, and its trauma, in what some would call extreme terms. “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Matthew 5:29,30. This is not so extreme when you understand and agree with what Jesus said.
Ellen White explains this nicely: “To prevent disease from spreading to the body and destroying life, a man would submit to part even with his right hand. Much more should we be willing to surrender that which imperils the life of the soul.” MB 60,61. I used to visit a man who had very serious diabetes. To save his life, they first cut off a toe, then three toes, then a foot, then the leg at the knee, then a finger, then another finger, then some more toes, and finally a hand. This big, tough man who had been a carpenter and a truck driver talked to me about his fears and agonies. It is not easy to part with your right hand, or even a finger or toe. He said to me, “Elder Lehman, I can feel the hand six months after it was cut off. I want to scratch it.” I had this man’s funeral after he passed away from his disease.
The symbolism of what Jesus taught is explained, continuing with the quote on page 61: “In order for us to reach this high ideal, that which causes the soul to stumble must be sacrificed. It is through the will that sin retains its hold upon us. The surrender of the will is represented as plucking out the eye or cutting off the hand. Often it seems to us that to surrender the will to God is to consent to go through life maimed or crippled; but it is better, says Christ, for self to be maimed, wounded, crippled, if thus you may enter into life. That which you look upon as disaster is the door to highest benefit.”
There are many things in life that are like cutting off your hand. I have heard some say they would rather commit suicide rather than give up their sin; and I have been with those who tried, and who still insist they are right in committing suicide rather than deny self. This is how severe the struggle really is, and how misunderstood it is.
The Lord is a little more specific with us, and Ellen White described some of these things like cutting off the hand or plucking out the eye. “In giving ourselves to God, we must necessarily give up all that would separate us from Him. Hence the Saviour says, ‘whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple.’ Luke 14:33. Whatever shall draw away the heart from God must be given up. Mammon is the idol of many. The love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds them to Satan. Reputation and worldly honor are worshipped by another class. The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others. But these slavish bands must be broken. We cannot be half the Lord’s and half the world’s. We are not God’s children unless we are such entirely.” SC 44.
When you begin to look at some of these things in your own lives, you begin to see that self is under attack; and our first reaction is to rise up and say, “But it is not true! I do not love those things. They are not my idols.” Well, if it is not so great to you, it should be easy to give it up; but that is a vastly different story, isn’t it? The difficulty in giving up these things is an indication of how important they are to us. We fight to keep them, and we call it self-preservation, like a drowning person who flails out to destroy the one who is rescuing them.
This brings us to the very heart of most of our problems. This is exactly where our salvation hinges. The reason why Christianity (and Adventism) is what it is today is because we have never met this head on and adequately handled it. We can talk about every aspect of theology, and we can learn all kinds of doctrines, but this is where the problem is. Our warfare is with self—the greatest battle ever to be fought. I can blame you, or my spouse, my circumstances, and everything else, but I still have to deal with self. Right here you have to be most careful. I told you at the beginning that every time you talk about the struggles and the works of man, you run right into the works of God. There is no way you can separate the two, for they are intimately interconnected and related.
“In the work of redemption there is no compulsion. No external force is employed. Under the influence of the Spirit of God, man is left free to choose whom he will serve. In the change that takes place when the soul surrenders to Christ, there is the highest sense of freedom [there is no dictator forcing us to do it]. The expulsion of sin is the act of the soul itself [and too many of us stop there, which only talks about the works of man]. True, we have no power to free ourselves from Satan’s control; but when we desire to be set free from sin, and in our great need cry out for a power out of and above ourselves, the powers of the soul are imbued with the divine energy of the Holy Spirit, and they obey the dictates of the will in fulfilling the will of God.” DA 466. Do you see the seeming contradiction? Sin is expelled by an act of the soul [which is our work], but we have no power to free ourselves from Satan’s control. To resolve this, we must also bring in the work of God, which is to imbue us with divine energy so that we will obey the dictates of our will in fulfilling the will of God.
How much does man do there? He realizes his tremendous need. How? Through the power of the Lord. He begins to love God. Why? Because God first loved him. He sees his helplessness and vileness. How? By coming to the cross, which was the greatest work of righteousness ever. He then cries out for a power out of himself. Then God works to imbue him with that power. Then he is able, by that outside power coming into him, to fulfill the will of God as he performs his own will. His will has now become God’s will.
How much did we do in all this? I chose, I desired, I called, I received. I only perform by the power of God in me. But even the initial desire came from God. There would not be one human being since the earth began who would ever desire to be different except that Christ condescended to become a man and die on the cross. It is the love of God that inspires us to be humble and die to self. There is no force. It is my own choice to seek redemption. And when I cry out to God for a power outside of myself, by the power of the Holy Spirit my will is able to do what it wants to do. And in doing that, it obeys the will of God.
This is largely so far in the area of justification and conversion; and most of us think our difficulty is not there. Most think our difficulty is in sanctification. I would suggest that we have more difficulty in this area we have looked at than we realize. Too many have had a superficial, minimal surrender to Christ in our initial experience; and we have a huge anchor dragging us down because of the poor surrender.
We want to go on to look at the role of man’s works in sanctification. We read in Matthew 16:24 that we must have a continual carrying of the cross—a day-by-day denying of self. Paul said, “I die daily.” 1 Corinthians 15:31. He also said, “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” 2 Corinthians 4:11. In verse 10 he talks about “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” There is a constant dying. It is never quite fully arrived at or achieved. “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” 1 Corinthians 9:27. I keep constant vigilance over self. This striving is less clearly understood in sanctification than it is in justification; but there in an ongoing dying to self that we understand very little.
Ellen White described this continual struggle: “It is not only at the beginning of the Christian life that this renunciation of self is to be made. At every advance step heavenward it is to be renewed. All our good works are dependent on a power outside of ourselves. Therefore there needs to be a continual reaching out of the heart after God, a continual, earnest, heartbreaking confession of sin and humbling of the soul before Him. Only by constant renunciation of self and dependence on Christ can we walk safely.” COL 159,160. Often we assume we must arrive at some plateau where we level off and we can say, “Self is taken care of.” There is no place you can find that in the Scripture or the Spirit of Prophecy. There are no plateaus. The quote continues: “At every advance step in Christian experience our repentance will deepen.” This renunciation of self is an ongoing process, not one act at one time. It is a day-by-day thing, and there are many quotations on this.
Here is more on the constancy of the warfare: “They must maintain a constant battle with self.” GW 135. “Yet self clamors constantly for the victory [it refuses to die].” 2T 537. “Sanctification is not the work of a moment, an hour, a day, but of a lifetime. It is not gained by a happy flight of feeling, but is the result of constantly dying to sin, and constantly living for Christ…So long as Satan reigns, we shall have self to subdue, besetting sins to overcome; so long as life shall last, there will be no stopping place, no point which we can reach and say, I have fully attained. Sanctification is the result of lifelong obedience.” AA 560. You never reach a plateau. It is always ongoing. And when does Satan cease to reign? When he is bound for a thousand years.
Our concepts of this have caused us much difficulty, and much guile and condemnation. I am not talking about complacency with what we are, but what God expects of us. What does He do with us and for us and through us? This we must understand better than we have in the past.
“Wrongs cannot be righted, nor can reformations in conduct be made by a few feeble, intermittent efforts. Character building is the work, not of a day, nor of a year, but of a lifetime. The struggle for conquest over self, for holiness and heaven, is a lifelong struggle. Without continual effort and constant activity, there can be no advancement in the divine life, no attainment of the victor’s crown.” MH 452,453. Many people get paranoid about this and think that statements like this make it utterly impossible for them. Stop and back up a little ways and take a different look from a different perspective, and see what the Lord is really saying about this. We get so sensitive about sin because we do not know the way to victory; thus we misunderstand these statements. God is talking about the battles that must be waged and how He will bless us in this.
Continuing on with the quotation: “The life of the apostle Paul was a constant conflict with self. He said, ‘I die daily.’ 1 Corinthians 15:31. His will and his desires every day conflicted with duty and the will of God. [You get in pretty good company when you discover you are in that same condition.] Instead of following inclinations, he did God’s will, however crucifying to his nature…The Christian life is a battle and a march. In this warfare there is no release; the effort must be continuous and persevering. It is by unceasing endeavor that we maintain the victory over the temptations of Satan. Christian integrity must be sought with resistless energy and maintained with a resolute fixedness of purpose. No one will be borne upward without stern, persevering effort in his own behalf. All must engage in this warfare for themselves; no one else can fight our battles.”
Many people misread this. To understand the Christian life and man’s efforts in that life, we must sit down and look at these things over and over again. Remember I told you we never talk about man’s work without running into what God does for us. Paul was saying that every day he found his own perverse will fighting against that of God, and he had to die in order for Christ to live in Him. “For me to live is Christ.” Philippians 1:21. The trouble is we assume that after conversion or a good experience, this process need not go on. We think that self is dead once and for all. That is not true. Self will try to rise up as long as we live; and we seem to be vulnerable to this. Therefore, because self is always threatening to rise up, every day it must be put down. The warfare is constant in Christ our righteousness. I must choose Christ every day, every hour, and every moment. I must never choose self. I must recognize that my difficulties are not just some remaining sins in my life. My difficulty is that self is not dead! It is not so much that I have to pray and ask God to take care of my temper, and then think when I have control over my temper, I will be in pretty good condition. It is asking the Lord to create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me because I am still violently selfish—all the time!
Some people have no wars, and they assume that because they have no wars that the Prince of Peace has given them peace; and they wonder why other people have so many struggles in life. Far more people than we realize have this experience. “The reason many in this age of the world make no greater advancement in the divine life is because they interpret the will of God to be just what they will to do. While following their own desires, they flatter themselves that they are conforming to God’s will. These have no conflicts with self.” AA 565. They view people who have great struggles as being on the side of the devil, when the opposite is probably true. The ones with the struggles are engaged in the warfare and making advancement. The ones sitting back thinking they have it made have lowered the standards so far that they think their own desires are the will of the Lord. They have no conflicts with self.
Continuing on with the quote: “There are others who for a time are successful in the struggle against their selfish desire for pleasure and ease. They are sincere and earnest, but grow weary of protracted effort, of daily death, of ceaseless turmoil. Indolence seems inviting, death to self repulsive; and they close their drowsy eyes and fall under the power of temptation instead of resisting it.” They think that the Lord does not require all of this, and they lay it all down and stop. But the Lord said, “he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” Matthew 10:22. People who stop enduring want to believe there will come a time and place when they have achieved; but the Lord says the battles always go on and the achieving is fighting every day against self. That is the achieving—fighting against self, always distrusting self, always waging a war against self. Never give up. It does not matter how bad self is, you never give up fighting the war.
When you have time, go study the life of Reuben, one of the sons of Jacob, and try to figure out how he could possibly be a symbol of one of the tribes that make up the one hundred and fortyfour thousand. His father said he was as unstable as water and that he would never excel. We have all seen people like him. They go to church for a few weeks, then give up and not go back for six months. Then he goes back to church for a while, and then stops again. This can continue on for thirty years. Reuben was just like that; but he never ceased coming back. I have known persons who had fallen deeply into sin and emotional problems, the most severe you can find, who tried to take their lives repeatedly; but they never ceased coming back to God for help. For years and years they had no victories, but they never ceased coming back. I could not even understand why they kept coming back, but they came back. They would sneak in and sit on the back pew and never talk to anyone, but they came back. And the Lord eventually gave them victory, because they never ceased coming back.
When you maintain the war, the Lord is always there to bless. When you give up the battle, the devil is always there to conquer. We have not understood the battle very well, and we have not put the striving and the works in the context of the battle. The Lord has not offered us some plateau of divine achievement, of great accomplishment, where we can say, “Look at me.” He never offered that. He says He offers us the task of being good soldiers, of fighting and marching in a war that never ends as long as life shall last.
In all this struggle we are counseled to “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God.” Ephesians 6:10. In His strength, fight the fight and wage the war.
If you have this battle and it gets tough sometimes, memorize and use this Bible promise: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness…For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.” Isaiah 41:10,13. God will take His strongest hand and grasp your strongest hand, and He will never let us go! Friend, when the Lord says He will do this, where is faith? We should believe this with all our heart and say, “Praise God, this is wonderful!” No wonder we fail so constantly when we do not get excited about texts like this.
The obvious question is: If He is going to do this and never let go, how can you ever fail? How can Satan ever get at you? How can you possibly succumb to old self again when the Lord is going to do all this for you? Here is the answer, and never, never forget it: “When Christ took human nature upon Him, He bound humanity to Himself by a tie of love that can never be broken by any power save the choice of man himself.” SC 72. No power can separate us from the love of Christ, or that hand that holds us except “the choice of man himself.” The devil cannot do that. It is only the choice of man himself.
Continuing on with the quote on page 72: “Satan will constantly present allurements to induce us to break this tie—to choose to separate ourselves from Christ. Here is where we need to watch, to strive, to pray, that nothing may entice us to choose another master; for we are always free to do this.” In the work of the Lord, there is utmost freedom. You may choose Christ with your will, and if tomorrow you are tired of it, you can choose Satan; and God will let you do that. And you will ask, “Why did He let me have so much trouble?” It is because you stopped choosing Him to rule over you. It is not the devil who forces us, for he cannot. He is not the one who crowds Christ out of our lives and takes away our hand from Christ’s hand. That happens by our own choice. There is never a time when the freedom of choice is missing, or when we have arrived and no longer have to make the choice. It is every day, every moment. We must choose Him as long as life shall last. That one act of choosing Christ, inspired by the Spirit of God and His tremendous love for us, is the one single act that man can do that brings down the powers of heaven to protect us and enable us and make us righteous by His grace and His righteousness.
It is a little frightening to realize that in these vacillating decisions we make every day that we are choosing a different master; that every morning when we awaken, we can have any master we choose that day. The Lord allows this by His great love. The previous quote continues on with a little admonition and urging: “But let us keep our eyes fixed upon Christ, and He will preserve us. Looking unto Jesus, we are safe. Nothing can pluck us out of His hand. In constantly beholding Him, we ‘are changed unto the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’ 2 Corinthians 3:18.”
There is something we can do. It isn’t much, but it is tremendous in its consequences. The Lord never goes to sleep, and as you wake up, He is waiting to see what your choice is. Whom will you serve today? This is the question that confronts us every day. In every decision of life, in buying or selling, in planning for the future, in going this way or going that way, the question is always: Whom will you choose to be your master? There is no force used in making that choice, just perfect freedom, as long as you shall live.
At this very moment, He moves upon our hearts with tremendous love, and He asks, “Don’t you love Me? Will you not by love serve Me? Will you not gladly choose Me because you want to?” There is no other Master as wonderful as He. Is this your choice? Tell Him so, even now.