Fit for the Master's Use
What does it mean to be fit for the Master's use? I will be attempting to answer that question over the next few Sundays. Our primary text for this Sunday will be Romans 7:14-25. If times allows, I challenge you to read Romans 6-8 preferably 1-8. Knowing how busy you are, let me point out one short phrase that packs an incredible punch. In 7:24, Paul writes: "O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" This is either total or complete fatalism or full unabashed self-awareness. I choose to believe the latter, and I will seek to prove it on Sunday.
The more we measure ourselves against God's standards of righteousness and holiness the more we recognize shortfalls in our life. The new creation in Christ lives with a spiritual tension that non-believers know nothing of. The Spirit-filled believer is sensitive to sin's consequences. We wrestle with the desire for the pleasures of sin and the disdain we have for it, aware of the agony it brings to God, us, and others. For some, it is not even a desire for sin - it is a habit formed out of a lifetime of laziness or busyness. Sin is not always rebellion. If it were, you and I might be golden. After all, we forsook the "bad sins" long ago. Unfortunately, the sins we are tormented by form the toughest peaks to climb. When I surrendered to the call of vocational ministry, I knew some things had to go. In thirty years, for example, I have maybe had a glass of champagne at a wedding and a half a beer left from a summer shrimp/crab boil. No questions. No regrets. I would to God I could say that about any and all things that I believe my Lord would qualify as sins. I am the epitome of a working-progress.
2 Timothy 2:21 states: "If anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and fit for the Master, prepared for every good work."
Our Lord came, lived, suffered, bled, and died for me and for you. Doesn't He deserve our vest best? I want Him to use me. I want to be a blessing of honor to be my Lord and King. Let's start this year off right. Give Him your all.