Some of us never spend more than a day with Jesus before our worries and self-interest come flooding in. We break our fellowship with the Lord, imagining that it is impossible to abide in him when circumstances are hard. We have to learn that there is no condition of life in which we cannot abide in Jesus.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas\u201d<\/i> (John 1:42). God writes our new name in the places where he has erased our pride and self-sufficiency. Some of us have the new name only in spots\u2014like spiritual chicken pox. When we have our best spiritual mood on, we act like saints. But don\u2019t look at us when we\u2019re not in that mood! <\/p>\n
Disciples are those who have the new name written all over them. Their pride and self-sufficiency have been completely erased. Pride is the deification of self, but there are many forms of pride. Today, many of us are prideful not like the Pharisee, who was obsessed with his own virtue, but like the tax collector, who was so humble he \u201cwould not even look up to heaven\u201d (Luke 18:13). To say \u201cOh, I\u2019m no saint\u201d sounds humble to human ears, but humility before people may be unconscious blasphemy before God. It means that you think God can\u2019t make you righteous, that you\u2019re so weak and hopeless the atonement can\u2019t reach you.<\/p>\n
Why aren\u2019t you righteous? Either you don\u2019t want to be or you don\u2019t think God can accomplish it. There would be no problem, you say, if God had taken you to heaven the instant you were saved. That is just what he will do! \u201cMy Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them\u201d (John 14:23). Make no excuses. Let Jesus be everything, and he will take you home with him not only for a day but for always.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of us never spend more than a day with Jesus before our worries and self-interest come flooding in. We break our fellowship with the Lord, imagining that it is impossible to …<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":2064,"template":"","collection":[],"class_list":["post-2595","modern-classic","type-modern-classic","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/modern-classic"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/modern-classic\/2595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utmost.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=2595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}