In HOPE

  In HOPE 8.29 

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David Timms  

 


Prayer for Today

Father, I want to live fully for You not for myself. I want Your will to be done in my life. I want Your purposes to be fulfilled through me. But You know how tightly I hold to me -- my plans, pride, and preferences. Teach me to let go. Guide me to trust You more. 

Lord, help me to hand You my hurts, to relinquish my agenda, to abandon my ambition, and to crucify my own cause, that Christ may live fully in me and through me. Amen.

Hope Happenings

Join Hope International University's Celebrate Hope Dinner on Friday, October 17th at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, CA with special guest Pat Boone. As a popular speaker, best-selling author, renowned recording star, family man, church elder and humanitarian, Pat continues to influence and inspire people around the world with his message of faith, hope, and love. For more information, visit www.hiu.edu.

Hope International University
Fullerton  CA  92831

 

Followers of Christ discover personal abundance
when they regularly encounter Christ,
experience personal transformation,
and share in His mission.
They intentionally integrate "with Christ, like Christ, and for Christ."


For Him

Living for Christ -- sharing His mission and responding to His leading -- forms the third leg on the stool of spiritual formation. To live for Him is to no longer live for myself.

It sounds simple, but a life yielded to His leading and a heart that forsakes its own preferences does not seem to come easily. And those moments of total submission, when they do arrive, prove difficult to sustain.

The Apostle Paul declared, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20) That's living for Christ. Not teeth-gritting determination. Not extraordinary reserves of self-discipline. Not Type-A drivenness. Not the over-achiever over-achieving. But death. Simply dead to ourselves and alive to Christ.

Living for Christ, understood in these terms, naturally involves His Presence (with Christ) and our transformation (like Christ). If "living for Christ" really means "Christ living through me" then I am not a worker on His behalf but a conduit in His hands. That's the paradigm shift that needs to happen.

Perhaps the struggle so many of us have in living for Christ -- devoted to His cause, responding to His leading, "walking by the Spirit" -- is that we continue to live for ourselves. With but one life to live and no constant conscious crucifixion ("I die daily") our own cause triumphs.

Living for Christ involves less straining and striving then we might imagine. It emerges from surrender and trust. The Kingdom of God is not advanced by the brilliant and the bold but by the broken -- those whose own will, agenda, ambition, pride, and plans have been broken.

The life lived authentically for Christ is a life Christ lives through us.

Have you died to yourself today? Died to your own aspirations, dreams, hurts, worries, and fears? Until we do, we cannot be alive fully to Christ nor can He live fully through us.

Our abundance springs from these three short phrases: "With Christ, like Christ, and for Christ."

In HOPE --

David

 

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You can find back issues of "In HOPE" (2005-2008) at http://www.hiu.edu/inhope/.

David Timms serves in the Graduate Ministry Department at Hope International University in Fullerton, California. "In HOPE", however, is not an official publication of the University and the views expressed are not necessarily those of the Administrators or Board. "In HOPE" has been a regular e-publication since January, 2001.