{"id":25070,"date":"2019-02-21T03:30:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/?p=25070"},"modified":"2019-02-20T12:35:34","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T20:35:34","slug":"february-21-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2019\/02\/21\/february-21-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"February 21, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\u201cI beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.\u201d <\/em>Romans 12:1<\/p>\n

Reasonable Service<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This verse has always stunned me into paying attention. Paul\u2019s encouragement (urging or beseeching) is because this should be my response in view of God\u2019s incredible mercies of allowing me (sinner) into His presence because Jesus suffered on the cross for humankind (and me) as a freewill offering.<\/p>\n

How often do I find myself whining because I know what God\u2019s will in a situation is, but I don\u2019t want to do it because I have my own plans or it\u2019s uncomfortable. If I\u2019m truly listening and desiring to follow and please the LORD, talking to my neighbor when I don\u2019t \u201cfeel\u201d like it, going the extra mile for my friend or even my husband, and so on.<\/p>\n

Jesus\u2019 life on earth certainly wasn\u2019t \u201ccomfortable\u201d many times, and especially when He paid the ultimate price for our sin, but He always did what \u201cpleased the Father.\u201d The tasks the LORD puts before us are not burdensome: \u201cCome to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light\u201d <\/em>(Matthew 11:28-30).<\/p>\n

My true desire is to please the Father and my Lord Jesus Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit He enables me to accomplish what He puts before me, one step at a time, because His Yoke is easy and burden is light. The Amplified Bible version of the above verse says that our reasonable service is the rational, logical, intelligent act of worship to God.<\/em><\/p>\n

Living holy and pure, available to Him for blessing others, is my calling. Sometimes I don\u2019t understand His promptings or what\u2019s going on, sometimes it may be just waiting on Him for the impossible; it\u2019s a walk of faith and trust. Taking the first step can be the hardest. My flesh and the devil have told me that \u201cthis will hurt\u201d; but after that step its not so bad and I\u2019m encouraged by knowing I have My Father\u2019s smile.<\/p>\n

So I will continue knowing His goal is before me and even though I can\u2019t see clearly, and may hear distracting voices, I don\u2019t feel good, or am worried about what others may think, He has this and I can follow Him one step at a time, because this is my reasonable service and worship.<\/p>\n

Praying we\u2019re all encouraged today to live in the marvelous light of His will through the empowering of His Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit, knowing it\u2019s the right thing and we\u2019re pleasing the Father.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank You, Jesus, for always doing what pleased the Father and doing the ultimate \u201chard thing\u201d for us on the cross. Help us to live and walk in Your love and truth! Amen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-6wm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25071,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25070\/revisions\/25071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}