PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Acts 26:12–18
“On one of these journeys I was going to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. About noon, King Agrippa, as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
“Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’
“‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’”
CONSIDER THIS
THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION
Lord Jesus, I am your witness. I long to be like you.
I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness.
I receive your love and release my selfishness.
Come, Holy Spirit, transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.
THE JOURNAL PROMPTS
Does anyone come to mind in your life who may be “kicking at the goads” as relates to faith in Jesus? Have you been tempted to give up on them? Does their persistent unbelief threaten your faith?
THE HYMN
Today we will sing “Where He Leads Me” (hymn 516) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. Get your copy here.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
P.S. ORDER YOUR WAKE-UP CALL EXODUS SERIES JOURNAL TODAY: Here’s a deal just for you
Yes, friends. We are diving into Exodus beginning September 2 and running right up to Advent. It is going to be a wild ride—forty chapters in thirteen weeks. The journal is an essential resource to optimize the journey. See what I did there—journal the journey. Order your journal today so we can make sure to have it in your hands for the starting line. I had faith and ordered a lot so don’t prove me wrong and turn them into toilet paper! Here’s the opportunity. It’s called BUY ONE SOW ONE. If you buy one journal, I will send you two—one for the person you are praying about inviting to join the Wake-Up Call for the Exodus series. Use the code SOWEXODUS.
P.P.S. The Seedbed Resource Team will be in Lexington, South Carolina, today through Friday
If you are in the area we will have a full complement of our resources at Mount Horeb Church—our Traveling Seed House. Please stop by and meet the team and grab some seeds for sowing in your heart, home, church, and city.
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4 Responses
Go With God’s Goads (And Inner Promptings)
God is always communicating to people even if we neglect to notice. He often goads or prompts us trying to get our attention. Often, He warns us in order to protect us from danger. He frequently directs us so that we don’t wander aimlessly. He continually calls us to come closer to Him. Sometimes He will even knock us down (like He did Saul of Tarsus in the Bible) to get our attention.
If you train your heart to focus on God, you’ll become aware that He is trying to communicate with you. Then you can be “a witness of what you have seen and will see” Christ do within you, around you, and through you.
That’s why the Bible says: “Be still and know that I am God,” and “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” That’s why Jesus said, “You will be My witnesses.” That why Christ-followers can overcome the devil by “the word of their testimony.” That’s why Jesus wants you to testify to people about His presence, power, and present-day reality. That’s why He is “sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified (made pure and whole) by faith in Me.’” (See Acts 26:18.) That’s why Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.”
As JD wrote: “The Holy Spirit is at work in every person, witnessing to the reality of God, wooing faith into existence. Men and women everywhere are literally ‘kicking at the goads.'” It’s time to stop kicking and instead to surrender to God’s will and literally go and do whatever Jesus says within you! (Keep in mind that He won’t contradict the Bible or your conscience.) You can begin by forgiving everyone and by loving your enemies.
Although I can’t name any particular individual who might be “kicking against the goads”, I do believe that there are many believers out there who are resisting God’s call upon their own lives to engage in some form of individual ministry to advance the Kingdom of God. In my opinion, this type of attitude that believes that vocational ministries are the only worthy types, and because they haven’t experienced that particular calling, I believe this is one reason the institutional church seems so anemic. In regards to Paul’s possible previous pre-crucifixion encounter with Jesus, I believe it quite reasonable to think that it may have happened.
I have a goad-kicker in my life. I continue to pray for him, but I can’t argue because he already knows the truth. JD’s insight reinforces the idea that he’s going to have to “fall off his horse”.
For those experiencing the same, here are some insights I’ve gathered:
The pharisees were not all bad. Jesus singled some of them out, not because of the depth of their sin, but because they had nowhere else to go. He could teach the woman at the well, Zacchaeus, many others. But because the pharisees knew the truth but rejected it, they had nowhere else to go. Their sin was no worse, just more intractable.
About Hebrews 10:26: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,”. I do not believe this is talking about losing a chance at salvation, but rather about losing hope. This is to the Hebrews – they had a long history of trying to be saved by works. Jesus is the final answer; there is nothing more. If you don’t accept Jesus, there is no more hope. (I keep thinking of Ghost Busters: “Who ya gonna call?”)
I see that in my goad-kicker. He has admitted he has no hope. That is theologically accurate. Someone from a non-Christian background may need to be guided from their false hope but for someone who knows the truth but is rejecting it, there can be no hope.
And therein lies our hope, ironically. God, mercifully, uses whatever is at hand to reach someone. I have great hope that God will jar him somehow, like Paul, and break his resistance. If I’m trying to convince someone to leave their false religion or no religion to follow Christ, there is a sense of duty, a danger to feel inadequate. For someone who knows the truth, there is no human action, only God doing what God does best. In that there is comfort for me and I can have, for him, the hope he has lost.
Rob, keep on praying for God to do whatever is necessary to give him a new heart. Sometimes God has to break a heart of stone before it can be replaced with a heart of flesh.