It certainly was a different Christmas for us this year.
Some plans stayed the same. Some got cancelled at the last minute. Most of it having to do with COVID.
I have missed you. So sorry that I got scooped up in the melee and did not communicate with you.
Today, I wanted to take just a couple of minutes to share this with you.
From Oswald Chambers, I believe it was on December 22.
"In preaching the gospel, always focus on the matter of the will.
Belief must come from the will to believe.
There must be a surrender of the will, not a surrender to a persuasive or powerful argument.
I must deliberately step out, placing my faith in God and in His truth.
And I must place no confidence in my own works, but only in God.
Trusting in my own mental understanding becomes a hindrance to complete trust in God.
I must be willing to ignore and leave my feelings behind.
I must will to believe.
But this can never be accomplished without my forceful, determined effort to separate myself from my old ways of looking at things.
I must surrender myself completely to God." Oswald Chambers
As a child I grew up in a denomination that placed great emphasis on "works," so it has been a struggle NOT to place confidence in my own works even though I KNOW my righteousness is as filthy rags.
I loved that particular denomination and believe most of what I was taught was pure truth. Satan does love to twist even a tiny portion of what we are taught to get us headed down the wrong road or at least veering from God's path ever so slightly.
The slightest distortion can end up being a major calamity somewhere down the road.
When scientists and mathematicians were figuring out the exact degrees for landing on the moon. The very slightest of miscalculations would have been disastrous.
So I want all of my beliefs to line up perfectly with God's truth.
These words of truth from Chambers give me great assurance and I hope they will for you also.
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