Do you know the struggle of denying yourself so that your total focus is on Jesus?
God had brought His people out of Egypt to the edge of the Red Sea, but now impassable water is before them and Pharaoh’s army eager to slaughter them. “‘Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?’” Despair, no hope other than God, but on the other side of the Red Sea their hope in God is vindicated. “The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he has cast into the sea” (Exodus 14:11; 15:2, 4).
It takes specially dedicated thought to see that I am nothing, to get my heart into that place where Israel panicked. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself” (Luke 9:23). The abilities you have are God-given; you give them back to your Redeemer daily or default to imagining they are yours. Every day we determine to stand on the other side of the Red Sea, to reflect intentionally that God has saved us through the waters (1 Peter 3:21).
“If you are hard and vindictive, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His grace” (Oswald Chambers).
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