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"Do-it-yourself Christianity is not much encouragement to the done in and worn out."

A thought by Max Lucado from his book, When God Whispers Your Name (p. 126). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Some of you today are just worn out.  You are doing all you can to make your life work, but it just doesn’t want to.  Maybe you need some help.

Max says, “At some point, we need more than good advice; we need help. Somewhere on this journey home, we realize that a fifty-fifty proposition is too little. We need more—more than a pudgy wizard (The Wizard of Oz) who thanks us for coming but tells us the trip was unnecessary.

“We need help. Help from the inside out. The kind of help Jesus promised. ‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he lives with you and will be in you’ (John 14:16–17, emphasis mine).”

Max goes on, “Note the final words of the verse. And in doing so, note the dwelling place of God— ‘in you.’  Not near us. Not above us. Not around us. But in us. In the part of us, we don’t even know. In the heart, no one else has seen. In the hidden recesses of our being dwells, not an angel, not a philosophy, not a genie, but God. Imagine that.”

He then says, “When my daughter Jenna was six years old, I came upon her standing in front of a full-length mirror. She was looking down her throat. I asked her what she was doing, and she answered, ‘I’m looking to see if God is in my heart.’

“I chuckled and turned and then overheard her ask him, ‘Are you in there?’ When no answer came, she grew impatient and spoke on his behalf. With a voice deepened as much as a six-year-old can, she said, ‘Yes.’”

Max says, “She’s asking the right question. ‘Are you in there?’ Could it be what they say is true? It wasn’t enough for you to appear in a bush or dwell in the temple? It wasn’t enough for you to become human flesh and walk on the earth? It wasn’t enough to leave your word and the promise of your return? You had to go further? You had to take up residence in us?”

Max then says, “’Do you not know,’ Paul penned, ‘that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?’ (1 Cor. 6:19 NKJV). Perhaps you didn’t. Perhaps you didn’t know God would go that far to make sure you got home. If not, thanks for letting me remind you.

“The wizard (The Wizard of Oz) says look inside yourself and find self. God says look inside yourself and find God. The first will get you to Kansas. The latter will get you to heaven. Take your pick.”

You don’t have to do life alone.  Would you open up your heart and ask God to come in?  Would you?


Yes, yes!
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