WHO'S IN CONTROL?

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Sister Lynne Parsons
We were blessed and challenged by Sister Lynne's Bible Study recently. Her text was from Daniel 3:8-18 where Daniel and his friends disobeyed the king by not bowing down to the image of gold. When they were threatened to be cast into a fiery oven their response was- "If that is the case, our God, whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up" (Verses 17,18).
 
She went on to explain how these men made a deliberate choice to obey God rather than man. And so should we. We have to make the decision that we are going to do the right thing. We are the only ones who are in control of our lives. We can not blame our lack of faith or power on anyone else. It is up to us! We must make the choice to obey God. No one can take that from us. We must hold ourselves accountable.
 
In Matthew 26:41 Jesus found his friends sleeping while they should have been praying.  Jesus said: "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Many times we allow the weakness of our flesh to take over and we give into temptation- whether it be in eating, recreation or any number of frivolous things that take away our time. These things that may not be sin, but they steal our time away and cater to the flesh. We should be yielding to the spirit.
 
God is "fine tuning" us! He is calling us out! Philippians 2:12-16 tells us that we should be "blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."
 
What are you allowing to control your life? Remember that we are the ones who are in control of how we react to life, the things we say and do. We have that responsibility and by allowing the spirit instead of the flesh to take over, we will be victorious.
 

Watch and Pray!
It's the "little foxes" that spoil the vines (Song of Solomon 2:15

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