“Submit yourselves then to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7)
I prayed to the Lord, “deliver me from the snare of the fowler, from Satan and his angels!” I was under attack! How dare he come near me! (Funny how we get so self righteous and blame Satan for our problems that, quite frankly, arise solely from our pride and our flesh!) I prayed, Lord, give me the victory; help me to overcome! Yesterday I did not overcome. She yelled at me, I said something ugly back. Before the end of the day we were alone in the office and God wrung an apology out of me, and I say wrung, because I DID NOT want to do it, but I literally felt like Jeremiah when he said that if he did not speak the words were like fire shut up in his bones. I had to get it out and did feel better after for a couple of reasons. Anyway, that certainly WAS NOT success in any way, shape or form and certainly WAS NOT a witness to these people that I have been praying for daily.
This morning in my prayer time I was apologizing to God for my behavior and praying that I would do better today. Yesterday I tried a lot of “self talk” and trying in my own strength, which I know NOT to do, but sometimes cannot find my way out of it. The Holy Spirit led me to commit to God that I WOULD submit to His will in this thing. Right before I left for work I read a bit in a book that I have been slowly working on. The passage contained a quote from Oswald Chambers’s book, “My Utmost for His Highest,” for September 30. It is titled “The Commission of the Call.”*
“We make calls out of our own spiritual consecration, but when we get right with God He brushes all these aside, and rivets us with a pain that is terrific to one thing we never dreamed of, and for one radiant flashing moment we see what He is after, and we say – ‘Here am I, send me.’ This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. God can never make us wine if we object to the fingers He uses to crush us with. If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way! But when He uses someone whom we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, and makes those the crushers, we object. We must never choose the scene of our own martyrdom. If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.
“I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped? You are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you, the wine would have been remarkably bitter. To be a sacramental personality means that the elements of the natural life are presenced by God as they are broken providentially in His service. We have to be adjusted into God before we can be broken bread in His hands. Keep right with God and let Him do what He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children” (http://www.myutmost.org/09/0930.html).
God is like that, what can I say? His timing is perfect; His ways are sure. I bowed my head and said, Lord, I will submit to Your will today. If this is the way You choose to humble me, so that my pride can be broken so that You can use me more, I WILL submit to it. I will humble myself to You Lord so that I might become more like Jesus, meek and mild. At once a weight lifted off my shoulders and I felt the strength to do what I must come upon me. Once I realized that He is the One that requires I submit, not to other people, but to Him alone, the rest…was easy. His yoke is easy and His burden is light and when I took it instead of my own, the way was plain and victory was so easy, unlike before.
So, dear ones, submit yourself to God. Resist the devil and he WILL flee from you. God bless. Thank you for your patience lending me your attention so kindly. I love you all. And remember, VICTORY IS OURS if we submit ourselves to the One Who judges rightly.
Yours in love and in Christ,
Sonya Richards
* Chambers, Oswald, and James Reimann. My Utmost for His Highest: an Updated Edition in Today’s
Language: the Golden Book of Oswald Chambers. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1992. Print.