Teach Me to Do Your Will

“Answer me quickly, O Lord!

    My spirit fails!

Hide not your face from me,

    lest I be like those who go down to the pit.

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,

    for in you I trust.

Make me know the way I should go,

    for to you I lift up my soul.

“Deliver me from my enemies, O Lord!

    I have fled to you for refuge.

Teach me to do your will,

    for you are my God!

Let your good Spirit lead me

    on level ground!

“For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life!

    In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!

And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies,

    and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul,

    for I am your servant.” (Psalms 143:7-12 ESV)

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are all going to have trying times and circumstances in our lives which will challenge the legitimacy of our faith in the Lord Jesus, and which may bring us to tears, but which should draw us closer to the Lord as we learn more and more to rely on God and not on ourselves. For we have an enemy, Satan, who wants nothing more than to destroy us and to break us down so that we will run from God instead of running to God. So, we must draw on the strength of the Lord.

For it is in these darkest times in our lives when we need the Lord more than ever before. So especially in times like these we must call on the Lord for help, and we must bring to memory all that the Lord has done in our lives throughout our lives so that we don’t give way to the enemy’s lies and begin to think that God has forgotten and forsaken us. And if you can keep a journal of your quiet times with the Lord, this is a good way to go back and to see all the ways God has worked miracles in your life previously.

And, yes, there will be those times when our spirits fail us, and our emotions give way to tears and perhaps to doubts and so we need those reassurances from our Lord and from his word to comfort our hearts and minds. For Satan loves to try to fill our minds with all sorts of fears and doubts which we then must reject while we claim the promises of God over our lives. But let me say here that all of God’s promises have conditions (stipulations), and so we must guard against claiming promises which may not apply to us.

And even though the Scriptures teach us that if we resist Satan that he will flee from us, he may not flee at the first resistance, or he may come back at us with a different approach, because his goal is to wear us down so that he can conquer us. So we have to keep resisting and eventually he will flee, but he will come back and try again at another time, perhaps when we are the most vulnerable or when we are physically weak, and when he feels he will have a better chance at getting us to crack. But we must keep resisting!

But resisting alone is not enough. We must draw on the strength of the Lord. We must be in his word daily, seeking his face, listening to his voice, and following him in obedience to his commands. We must remain steadfast in our walks of faith and obedience to the Lord, and keep on pressing forward even when our emotions or our minds or our bodies might be weak and tired. We cannot and should not go by our emotions, for our emotions will fail us. We have to press forward even when we don’t feel up to it.

And, yes, we should pray to the Lord for deliverance from all enemies, for if we are following Jesus Christ with our lives in wholehearted devotion to him, we are going to have enemies. And those enemies could be our closest friends or companions or family members or others who profess faith in Jesus Christ. And they could be “pastors” and “elders” of “churches,” who are following after the ways of the flesh and the ways of the world and who are being trained to reject those who have seriousness of faith in Christ.

And no matter what we are up against, or whom, we must be those who are seeking after the Lord and his ways, and who are desirous to be taught to do the will of God for our lives. And his will for our lives goes way beyond just making a profession of faith in him. But his will for us is to do his will and to surrender our lives to him, to submit to him as Lord, to die daily to sin, and to walk daily in obedience to his commands. And it is to learn what his plan is for our lives and then for us to submit to that plan and to do it.

[Matthew 7:21-23; Matthew 24:9-14; Matthew 28:19-20; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John 6:35-58; John 8:31-32; John 10:27-30; John 14:15,21,23-24; John 15:1-11; Acts 26:18; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10; 1 Peter 2:24; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2]

Oh, to Be Like Thee, Blessed Redeemer 

Lyrics by Thomas O. Chisholm, 1897

Music by W. J. Kirkpatrick, 1897

Oh, to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,

This is my constant longing and prayer;

Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,

Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Oh, to be like Thee! full of compassion,

Loving, forgiving, tender and kind,

Helping the helpless, cheering the fainting,

Seeking the wandering sinner to find.

O to be like Thee! lowly in spirit,

Holy and harmless, patient and brave;

Meekly enduring cruel reproaches,

Willing to suffer others to save.

O to be like Thee! while I am pleading,

Pour out Thy Spirit, fill with Thy love;

Make me a temple meet for Thy dwelling,

Fit me for life and Heaven above.

Oh, to be like Thee! Oh, to be like Thee,

Blessèd Redeemer, pure as Thou art;

Come in Thy sweetness, come in Thy fullness;

Stamp Thine own image deep on my heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrYhiK2nQBg 

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