Luke 9:23—Then He said to them all: “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”
I recently spoke on the subject of maintaining our spiritual house. At the end of the message I asked each person to fill out a form. On that form each individual rated what kind of personal devotion time he or she was getting with God. The scale ranged from nonexistent--‘0’ to consistent time with the Lord—‘10’. Eighty-six percent of those who turned in response forms inconsistently set aside time to meet with the Lord.
Knowing God does not come naturally or easy because our flesh’s proclivity is to resist the Holy Spirit. It’s much easier to do what I want to do then to deny myself and follow Jesus. Rather than take our relationship with God for granted we must encourage each other to pay the cost of saying "no!" to self and "yes!" to spending time with God. Incredibly, as we say "yes" to God many of those distractions that kept us from Him in the first place, disappear.
Inspiration
