Exhortation from CIP

FROM THE TRENCH

Dear Friends,
As summer has begun, God has been stirring in me an urgency and sobriety that “It’s time”. It’s time for us to seek Him with all of our hearts, and to desire righteousness in our lives. I believe this is a season of purification as He takes us to the next level. The scripture that He is impressing strongly upon my heart is Hosea 10:12:
“Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.”

In obedience I have been fasting and crying out to Almighty God to help me, and His entire Church in Canada, to seek Him fervently until He brings us to a greater place of righteousness. I am realizing the grave importance of being a righteous woman of God, but also the truth that I cannot do it on my own. I cannot make myself righteous, no matter how hard I work or how much I “do”. I am hopelessly lost if God does not, by the power of His Holy Spirit, come in and transform me. I want to be pure and walk uprightly, but I have to agree with Paul when he so profoundly said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing…….What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:15-19, 24)
In order for us to be righteous, we MUST seek the Lord. Otherwise we will never attain it. In the previous chapter of Romans, Paul encouraged the Church that we as believers have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (6:18), and that obedience is what leads to righteousness (6:16). As God has shown us over and over throughout the past year, everything is founded on that one thing – obedience to Christ.

This process has been very sobering as God is taking me into a greater place of responsibility for my decisions and actions, and death to my flesh and my own will, desires and expectations. God has been speaking to me more strongly and firmly during this time, that ”It’s not a game.” It’s not about my own pleasure or personal gain. He is not saying this in condemnation (Rom. 8:1), but rather because He is fiercely jealous for my heart and for His glory. There is a higher calling for each one of us as men and women of God, leaders in the kingdom, and those that represent Christ to the nation and the world. We are in a time NOW when God is beginning to hold us to greater accountability. I have been struck and humbled by the realization that the decisions I am tempted to make in my flesh and “in the moment”, or in my own understanding, can have very grave consequences that will cause pain and destruction not only in my life, but in the lives of others, and will tarnish God’s reputation in the eyes of those watching me. We cannot and must not compromise our integrity by forgetting the big picture and the fact that our lives are not our own.

This is why righteousness is so vital for us to pursue as followers of Christ. We must “break up the fallow ground” in our lives (Hosea 10:12), allowing God to deal with the hardness that keeps us from walking in obedience to Him, and prepare us for the abundance of fruit that He desires and has destined to produce in and through our lives.

Now, my fellow soldiers in the trench, I don’t know about you, but obedience does not always come easily for me. I can understand why Paul said, “I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.” (6:19) Sometimes our flesh just will not submit. We are stuck in the patterns that we have operated in for so long. So what do we do when we can’t seem to make ourselves do or say or think what we know we should, or stop ourselves from doing or saying or thinking what we know we shouldn’t’? We seek God. We cry out to Him with humility and sincerity of heart and ask Him to make us righteous. And we keep seeking until He comes and rains righteousness on us.
Friends, that is our goal for this month. Let’s seek God earnestly, confessing our unwillingness to walk in obedience and be made righteous, but declaring that we really desire to become willing. Let’s cry out to Him to give us that willingness, and the grace, to obey Him and to wait for and receive His righteousness. And let’s agree together that He will come and rain righteousness upon us!

Seeking Him,
Karen Schmidsrauter
News Director, CIP