True consecration to Christ simplifies life, for it leaves the management to HIM. It also unifies life, for it blends all our motives and activities in on all-controlling aim to please HIM. It purifies life, for it expels all that is disapproved by HIM. It amplifies life, for it gives the divine will spacious fulfillment through us to uplift HIM. And it glorifies life, for it makes us a blessing to others and a praise to HIM.Our entire consecration is that which our Lord Himself desires for us above all else - far more than our service, our money, our time, or even our prayers...There can be no substitute for this, simply because there is no equivalent. How incalculably important, also is our consecration to Christ when we think of the unsaved all around us, and of the low spiritual average among believers today, and of our Lord's nearing return!
Are not all Christians thus consecrated? Not; far from it. But to they not all desire it? Yes, I think they all do. whey then are so few actually consecrated? It is because consecration, although in one sense a simple "handing over" followed by a simple "hands off", is the hardest of all capitulations to the elf-centered ego in us. To give up this or that or the other sin is comparatively tolerable, but to give up self-management, self-motives, grudges, plans, and self-everything, is utterly unbearable to our hereditary Adam-nature, which is supported in its resistance by Satan and the world, and perhaps unintentionally by other Christians.
Oh, it is a super crisis of the soul, to give up your claim to every bit of merit, your desires for the present, and if necessary your plans for the future, your first claim on every penny you possess, your own ideas, your everything - not just for a year or a decade, but for ever! One of the most powerful deterrents is our fear of being misunderstood by loved ones, and the loneliness which may be thus occasioned. There is only one thing which can make this complete hand-over easy. It is to have such a trustful, grateful, adoring love for Jesus that all else seems "dross" compared with His dearness and excellency...It is the supreme test of our love.
From: Awake My Heart, a daily devotional book by J. Sidlow Baxter.
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J. Sidlow Baxter (1903 - 1999)
J. Sidlow Baxter was born in Australia and grew up in Lancashire, England. He attended Spurgeon's Theological College in London and was a pastor in Scotland and England. He is the author of over thirty books and has ministered in churches, Bible Conferences, and missionary centers throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and other places around the world.He is scholarly but very practical and helpful. These spoken sermons will be a great blessing to God's people for many years to come. What a time it will be when we are able to meet with men like Dr. Baxter in the New Jerusalem that John saw coming down out of heaven.
J. Sidlow Baxter was a pastor and theologian who authored as many as thirty books[1] (depending on how anthologies and collections of sermons are to be counted) analysing the Bible and advocating a Christian theological perspective. His most popular work was Explore the Book, a 1760 page tome that analyses and summarizes each book of the Bible.
Baxter was raised in Lancashire, England, and attended Spurgeon's College in London before pastoring in England and Scotland, in Northampton and Sunderland. Memories of his early campaigns in Essex in about 1926 survive in the Memories of C. Everett.