Is Your House For Sale?
A visual story
You are a “house.” There are many rooms, many parts to your house; each room represents a part of your life. There’s your family relationships, your financial condition, your education, your friendships, your role as father, mother, son, daughter, there’s your accomplishments, and your failures, your pride, all that makes up you and your life.
The Lord draws those who will admit that they have not been good landlords. He comes for those whose houses are little more than shacks, because these are the people who will recognize their need.
He offers to purchase the house, but before the transaction is made, he spells out the terms of the sale. When he purchases the house, he will come in and totally redo it. He’ll knock down walls, strip the decorations, he’ll dig up and replace the foundation. Sometimes it will be painful. But it is necessary because he wants to change the shack into a palace, a palace where the King Himself will reside.
Can't both be Lord
Change of ownership
To be born again one must come to the realization that Jesus is LORD, and relinquish authority and control of one’s "house," one’s life, to him. That means once you hand him the keys, you let go all rights to the governing of your life. You must be willing to trustingly surrender to him the key to each room, including the darkest ones, the hidden ones. Once this transaction takes place, the renovation will begin. The Lord will move in and begin the transformation of the human soul.
The Cost To You
Why people resist
Many people shrink back from such a transaction out of fear of what it will entail. And that’s a legitimate consideration. You must first come to realize that all you have done and accomplished for yourself misses the mark. One must first come to see that all treasure here is going to pass away, and he must be willing to receive the admonition of Jesus that one should instead lay up treasure for himself in heaven, where it will last forever.
He can totally be trusted
"Great is thy faithfulness...."
And finally, one must come to the realization that the Lord who made us has our BEST interests at heart. He will not inflict suffering for the sake of suffering, he will not do ANYTHING in us apart from a goal to bring about in us the fulfillment of all the desire of our hearts. We are particularly made, no two persons alike. We are as unique as our fingerprints. We have been made with a personality, talents, abilities, and gifts unique to each one alone, and with desires that flow out of each one’s unique personality. The Lord will bring all these together to fulfill the whole purpose and potential placed within each one before that one was even born.
Will he demand that I be a missionary in Africa?
Will there be no more fun in my life?
Some might fear coming to the Lord because of a dread of what he will call him to be a –a missionary in Africa, for example? This suggestion to the mind is a lie. Whatever the Lord calls a person to do, will be completely in harmony with the way that person is made. Ask any missionary, and he will tell you he couldn’t conceive of any other way of life, because his call is completely suited to the way he was made. The Lord is not seeking to go contrary to the way he has made an individual, but instead to fulfill the heart of that person and all that is in him. One who has been born again and has walked with the Lord for a length of time, will tell you that his whole satisfaction is in the new life the Lord has made for him individually. Do not fear what God will do inside you, nor what it will cost. His goal is the maturation and perfection of all your desire, your gifts, your talents, your very personality until he has made you the person you were uniquely created to be.
God has a unique plan for your life
You were planned before the foundation of the world
God has a specific and individual plan for your life. Your fulfillment as a human being can only happen as you find out what that plan is and give yourself over to letting him bring it all to pass. It will be a decision you will never regret.
If you choose to avoid his plan for your life
God will never violate your free will
Regret -is suddenly arriving at the end of your life, and standing before your creator only to find out that you missed what he had planned for your life.
If you accept
You will never regret it
The greatest satisfaction a human being can experience is in arriving at the end of his life and standing before his Creator, and hearing, “Well done thou good and faithful servant.” The rewards awaiting us in heaven are eternal, they will be ours forever. The wise person heeds this message and determines to seek only that which will last forever
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NEXT:
THE COST TO HIM