Earlier on June 23rd, 2023, I posted, I surrender All, including the hymn entitled, I Surrender All. I woke up today rather slowly. I don’t like waking up tired, but I’m grateful to wake up at all. I take this time to say, “THANK YOU, JESUS!” Holy Spirit reminded me of a conference, My husband, Lee, and I recently attended at, Courtship of Praise Church in Elmore, AL 36025. It was a life-changing event. I remember telling my husband, “I only have one complaint, We are going to be held responsible for what we heard.”

I am going to print the song once again:

The man who wrote the lyrics, Van DeVenter, had to choose between having commercial success and serving God. He was a Christian, but he was challenged with what all of us are challenged with: Will we surrender ALL to God or not. You can look up this song online and learn more about the lyricist.

Everyone (at least in my generation and before) has heard the adage, “You can’t have your cake and eat it too”. It simply means you can’t keep you beautiful, lushes cake in its entirety, if you eat it. In other words you can’t have it both ways:

Holy Spirit is challenging me down to the bottom of my toes. He is not challenging me in things that are obvious that’s a no-brainer. Oh no, He is challenging me in areas that are “decent and honorable”. He is rearranging my thoughts and mind-set as He is takes me into this new season with Him.

Matthew 6:24 (KJV) says: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon (money or material riches). Luke 16:13 (KJV) says the same thing,

In Matthew 16:24-26 (NIV), Jesus says this: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” Mark 8:34-37; Luke 9:23-25.”

Paul says in Philippians 3:7-11 (NIV) “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage (KJV says dung, meaning poop), that I may gain Christ-the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ-yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

1 John 2:15 (NIV) “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life-comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”

Romans 6:16-23 (NIV) : “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves of righteousness. I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, but the GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Philippians 3:12-16 (NIV): “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. but one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. and if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

My banner song for the moment is, There’s No doubt About It by We The Kingdom. Check it out on YouTube.