TODAY IS THE DAY

Jesus said to His disciples, "Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me.”  (Matthew 16:24 NIV)

Jesus calls us to take up a cross and die. Not someday when we take our last breath, but to die to ourselves today…

Bruce Thielemann is an author, he wrote these words, “Please don’t say anything to me about tomorrow. Tomorrow is a word the Bible does not know. The Holy Spirit’s word is “today.” The Bible says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:15). And Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 6:2, “For God says, ‘At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.’ Indeed, the ‘right time’ is now. Today is the day of salvation.”

Today is the day of salvation. Don’t say tomorrow. The word is “today.” 

-- Adapted from “Not a Fan” Study by Kyle Idleman

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A NEW SELF

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  (Galatians 2:20 NIV)

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give Me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down… Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked -- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: My own will shall become yours.” 

-- C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

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