February 24 The Delight Of Sacrifice
\n\u201cI will very gladly spend and be spent for you;\u201d 2 Corinthians 12:15<\/p>\n
When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ\u2019s interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind of man there is. We have no right in Christian work to be guided by our affinities; this is one of the biggest tests of our relationship to Jesus Christ. The delight of sacrifice is that I lay down my life for my Friend, not fling it away, but deliberately lay my life out for Him and His interests in other people, not for a cause. Paul spent himself for one purpose only \u2013 that he might win men to Jesus Christ. Paul attracted to Jesus all the time, never to himself. \u201cI am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.\u201d When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men: he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men. Paul became a sacramental personality; wherever he went, Jesus Christ helped Himself to his life. Many of us are after our own ends, and Jesus Christ cannot help Himself to our lives. If we are abandoned to Jesus, we have no ends of our own to serve. Paul said he knew how to be a \u201cdoor-mat\u201d without resenting it, because the mainspring of his life was devotion to Jesus. We are apt to be devoted, not to Jesus Christ, but to the things which emancipate us spiritually. That was not Paul\u2019s motive. \u201cI could wish my self were accursed from Christ for my brethren\u201d \u2013 wild, extravagant \u2013 is it? When a man is in love it is not an exaggeration to talk in that way, and Paul is in love with Jesus Christ. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
February 24 The Delight Of Sacrifice \u201cI will very gladly spend and be spent for you;\u201d 2 Corinthians 12:15<\/p>\n
When the Spirit of God has shed abroad the love of God in our hearts, we begin deliberately to identify ourselves with Jesus Christ\u2019s interests in other people, and Jesus Christ is interested in every kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-43209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-utmost","tag-my-utmost-for-his-highest","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellsofgrace.com\/devotion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}