God wants from us an attitude of total performance

The fundamental attitude of the servant of God, the mature and well-trained believer in the truths of Scripture, should be one that we live for God in a total way. We live to serve Him, to advance the interests of His Kingdom. We do not live for ourselves, we are entirely God's and He has the right to do with us whatever He wants.

I want to leave well, well established in your heart this idea that our life should be one of total surrender to the Lord, of total performance, of total humility and that idea that God has the right to do whatever He wants in my life, be it something good or something not so nice.

And I want to take a couple of Scriptures to illustrate this idea before I get into the other things, about how the Bible strengthens this idea that we are servants, we are slaves of the Lord. When Paul wrote his epistles, he always began his writing saying: Paul, servant of the Lord, in other words: Paul, slave of Jesus Christ. The word dulos that he used in Greek meant: a slave, and when we translate it into Spanish by using the word servant, I am afraid that that word loses all the force that Paul wanted to express. The idea was that Paul was totally at the disposal of his Lord. Paul's idea was that he did not live for himself but that his life was totally given to the Will of the heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who had had so much mercy on him.

This idea is found, for example, in Galatians, in chapter 2 verse 20, where Paul says: "With Christ I am crucified together, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, and what I now live in the flesh I live. in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. "

Note here that Paul considers himself so surrendered to the Lord and to His Will that he considers himself to be dead, he says: I no longer live but Christ lives in me. In other words, it is as if Paul were saying: my personality, my will, my dreams about life, my aspirations, everything has lost total importance before the idea that the Lord is the one who expresses himself through me; whatever God wants from my body, my mind, my voice, that's what I'm going to do.

And Paul adds: and what I now live in the flesh, that is, all my life as a man, everything I do, everything I am, everything I express, I live in the Person of Jesus Christ. That is, since what I want to say and do does not matter, everything is simply the reflection and projection of the personality of Christ in me, why? because the Lord gave himself, says: "He who gave himself for me, for the Son of God who gave himself for me."

You see that idea here that, since God has already given everything, since Christ already made such a great sacrifice on the cross for our lives, what can we give to the Lord? whatever we give to God is going to be totally insignificant. And that is why Christ says: When you have done all that you have been asked to do, know that ultimately that is nothing. And the Lord's idea was that, wasn't it? like killing and hitting that tendency to pride that is in all of us and to believe that we are more than we really are.

The apostle James in chapter 4 of his Epistle takes up this idea also, in a different way, of a call to consider ourselves totally at God's disposal. In James 4 verse 13 James says: "Let's go now to what you say, today and tomorrow we will go to that city and we will be there for a year, and we will traffic and earn, when you do not know what will be tomorrow. Because what is your life? it is mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes; instead of which you should say: if the Lord wants we will live and do this or that. "

Do you see Santiago's exasperation? The apostle James is kind of annoyed with those people, including Christians, because he is writing to Christians, who live their life as if they are in control of it; They decide where to move, what job to choose, who to marry, what church to attend, how to spend their time and use their money, without first consulting God. Lord, what do you want me to do? Where do you want me to invest my energies? How do you want me to spend my time today, and in what things do you want me to invest the talents that you have given me?

James is calling Christians to that idea of total surrender to God, that idea of saying: if God wants we will do this or that. Any attitude other than that, any attitude of independence like: I have some things and God has others, and I have the right to choose what I give to God and what I keep, that is an attitude of total arrogance.

And that is why in this same passage James adds: "But now you boast in your arrogance. All such pride is bad, and to him who knows how to do good and does not do it, it is a sin." In other words, sometimes we are boastful, we are proud, we are arrogant, not because we say so openly: I am going to do what I want, but because we live as if we can do what we want and that attitude is tremendously offensive in the presence of the Presence. of the Lord.

Rather, what God wants from us is an attitude of total performance, surrender, openness to His Will, and when we have that attitude, you know what? then the heavenly Father delights to give us whatever we want. When we humble ourselves God exalts us, lifts us up, and puts us in places of great power and great authority in His Kingdom. May the Lord bless us and we will continue this meditation in our next message.