Daily Light

Since I am reading A Chance to Die again, I have been thinking about the devotional book Amy Carmichael used called Daily Light. The other day, I decided to see if it was still available…and it was! Both to purchase and on-line.

It’s a really neat little devotional…and unique as it is entirely scripture. I’d like it better if the references were next to the excerpts…but then maybe people (lazy ones like me) wouldn’t go read the verse in context?

Anyway, I read the reading for this morning and it made me think of Jim Elliot again…well more to what my reading in his journals made me think about. Our old self and new self…the struggle with sin…and the possibility of being more than conquerors when we determine to submit all to Him!

You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
How can we who died to sin still live in it?—I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.—He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.—Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. We are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.—“Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us.”—Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.—“Because I live, you also will live.” “To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” Col. 3:3; Rom. 6:2; Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:15; 2 Cor. 5:17; 1 John 5:20; John 17:21; 1 Cor. 12:27; John 14:19; Rev. 2:17

Reading this I feel I have no room for wallowing in my own failings, inconsistencies and inadequacies. I am suddenly thinking of lines from two different songs:

“I get knocked down…but I get up again”

and

“Sure the waves can knock me down, but I say ‘Let ‘em roll!”

That last one is from Watermark’s first CD…it is a song called “Driven to Humility” And that is really what it is all about…we must be humble to submit our life, our will, to another…to receive correction and leadership…to focus on one who is stronger in the midst of temptation and sin. Pride keeps us looking at us…even when all we are seeing is bad. It is still pride because we are in effect saying that our badness is greater, more important than His goodness, His power, His mercy, His ways.

Driven to Humility, indeed!

There is nothing natural within me that wants a life hidden in Christ. I want to be the main attraction...I want to think that what people see in me is all good and all me...even typing this I want to make sure those reading it don't get the wrong impression of me. But despite that...and nearly as equally (and more so most of the time) I do recognize that the Lord has placed in me a desire to glorify Him...to reflect Him...to decrease as He increases. And I am so thankful for that!