Becoming Prepared God’s Way?

Many ask me, how do I prepare to endure the coming end of this age troubles. The following is an excerpt from my up and coming book, you can expect “Midnight Cry Awakening” to be available in the fall of 2020. Allowing Christ to do what ever it takes to conform you to his character is the only way. However, you must …

Sit Down and Count the Cost

Christ warned His followers to sit down and count the cost of becoming a true disciple. Many Christians have never heard this admonishment. Christ desires to deal with you and me thoroughly. This means everything that interferes with the Lordship of Christ in our lives—those things that we love more than Christ—must come under His discipline.

We must submit to His discipline, by prayerfully giving him permission. It is an unrelenting process until we are truly transformed in to a son or daughter of God, no longer driven by the passions and desires of the flesh. • See note below

We cannot control or speed up this process, but we can abort or slow it down if we do not learn to cooperate with the discipline of the Lord and the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Counting the cost of following Christ means we consider and willingly give up running our own lives as we see fit. If we do not properly consider Christ’s demands, we will underestimate the difficulties and trials God ordains and become discouraged and quit.

We must learn how to present our lives to this all-demanding work of Christ. We must be willing to renounce all that we control and expect fiery trials and pressing circumstances to purify our hearts. We must brace for the worst, hope for the best, and expect Christ to complete that which He started within our inner life. We must let go and trust God with our lives and trust God for others, including those we love. “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (See Luke 14:25-35).

• Flesh: self-centered, sinful and willful living that is not according to God’s will. In this context the word flesh describes a carnal Christian who is motivated (driven) by inappropriate intentions of the heart. The Apostle Paul describes the symptoms or characteristics of a carnal or flesh driven Christian as follows: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21).