Wednesday, April 16, 2008

My Heart's Desire

I wrote this about 16 years ago, and I can see how God has taken hold of my life since then and directed it, after giving my life wholly to Him:

My heart's desire is to be totally faithful to God. I have set my foot to the plow and I will not look back. He has loosed the chains from my neck and the weights upon my shoulders. I was in bondage to sin, but He has set me free. I will not forsake Him. He has opened my eyes to see, my ears so I can hear. He has healed my soul. God has spared me from death - I will live for Him. He has given me life from the dead; I owe my life to Him. I will not surrender to the world. I no longer want what the flesh desires. How can I let sin reign in my life when God is on the throne? His presence has filled my heart and mind. He is my God! I will have no other gods before Him. The free will He has given me I give back to Him. This life He has given me I gladly offer to Him. I will do the work God gives me to do even if it costs my life, for I do not live for this life but the life that is to come. I submit all I am and all I ever shall be to the great I AM, the God of Abraham. There is nothing I have that does not belong to Him. I submit not only out of obedience but also out of love, because He bought me with a price. I was a slave to sin, but now I'm free. So I desire to be a slave to God, yet He has made me to be a son. What can this world offer? What can take the place of the one and only God, the Creator of every living thing? I have a relationship with the living God! Will I fear my fellow man? No. My God is the Creator of all, I will bow before Him. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Why should I fear? What could separate me from the love of God? Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or the sword? In all these things I am more than a conqueror through Him who loved me. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Messiah Jesus my Lord. This life is but a vapor. It appears a short time and then vanishes away. What would it profit me if I were to gain the whole world and lose my own soul? Yet my life is not lost, God has redeemed me. I will put nothing before Him. This world offers nothing in comparison to God. I am but a stranger in a foreign land. I set my sights on the kingdom of God, not treasures on earth. Yet even my faith is given to me. I am what I am by the grace of God. I would be like those living in Sodom and Gomorrha, like the world we live in today, if it were not for God coming into my life and His continual hand on me. God has opened my eyes, showing me that true life is in following Him; everything else is vanity. I am not ashamed, for the strength I have to live for God is provided by God. Without Him I am nothing. Through all eternity I will praise Him, for He has saved my soul from Hell. He has written my name in the Lamb's Book of Life. With eagerness I await my Lord's coming, when He will take me home. Even so, come Lord Jesus, come!