How to Live in the Spirit Daily

Good morning, Happy Souls!

Bill Keller wrote a wonderful devotional today
that I highly recommend to you.  He has given
me permission to copy his e-mails, and I'm sure
he would be happy if you would share this with
people you know as well.

This devotional provides a powerful answer for
all those times I wished I knew how to be a better
Christian but wasn't sure what to do. 

Read on.

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DAILY DEVOTIONAL    TUESDAY JANUARY 31, 2006
(1 Corinthians 15:31, Romans 8:4-13, Galatians 5:16,
Galatians 2:20)

***SO MANY people emailed after the Devotional last
week where I spoke of "dying to self," that I felt
the need to re-visit that issue by explaining exactly
HOW to "die to self" each day.  I pray that God will
open your heart as He speaks to you about how to have
the deep, intimate relationship with HIM each day.

HOW to "die to self" daily.  Dying to self daily is
what Paul spoke of so often.  It is how we walk in
the "Spirit" and not in the "flesh" as we are
instructed in Romans Chapter 8 and Galatians Chapter 5. 
The whole issue of dying to self daily is the absolute
key to living a victorious life in Christ.  It literally
means that you have to die to self DAILY!  This is why
so many people who are saved, love the Lord, live
beneath their blessings and in constant turmoil.  This
is how people who know Christ as their Savior end up
committing adultery, cheat people, lie, get in bondage
to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling, shopping,
greed, and anything else people become enslaved to. 
They don't die to self each day and end up walking
in the "flesh" and NOT the "Spirit."

People wonder all the time how a pastor, a deacon, an
elder, someone in the leadership of God's church
could leave their wife and run off with another
woman.  People wonder all the time how a Sunday School
teacher who loves the Lord could neglect her children
and family because of alcohol.  Maybe you are
wondering how you could be raising your hands to Jesus,
speaking in tongues, and being used by God to touch
lives one day, and sinning against God the next.  The
answer is when you fail to die to self each day, you
are walking in the "flesh," not the "Spirit."

The question that needs to be addressed today is HOW
does a person "die to self?"  The first step is an
action, something that you must do.  Dying to self is
a conscious choice that you must make, one nobody can
make for you.  It is the act of surrendering your
life completely to Christ.  The reason God's Word
talks about dying to self DAILY is because it is
something that we must do each and every day.  Our
life with Christ is not for an hour or two on Sunday,
but literally 24/7.  It is critical to make the
choice to die to self each and every day.

Since this is something you must do each day, I do
it and counsel others to do it the moment you wake
up in the morning.  As I first open my eyes to a
new day, before I do anything I take a moment and
thank God for a day that was not promised to me and
make the conscious choice to completely surrender
my life to Him that day.  I literally tell God to
take my life and use it for His glory that day, to
use me as an instrument of blessing.  When we get
saved, we not only ask Christ into our heart and
life by faith, but we give our very lives to Him. 
In dying to self each day, we are reaffirming that
our life doesn't belong to us any longer, it is His.

At the moment we are born again, we receive the
promise of the "Comforter," or the Holy Spirit. 
Each Believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit to
empower them and guide them throughout their life. 
t is literally the power of Almighty God living
within each person who has given their heart and
life to Christ by faith.  As you surrender your
life afresh to Christ at the start of each day,
you are allowing your life to be controlled by the
Holy Spirit and not by your flesh.  It is no longer
you but God that is in complete control of your
life.  You have traded in your thoughts and desires
for God's thoughts and desires.  It is not YOU that
is living, it is Christ living in you as Paul wrote
in Galatians 2:20.

This whole process takes only a few minutes of time
alone with the Lord, but it is the most important
few minutes of your day.  When you don't go through
this process each and every morning, you wake-up,
start going through your day, and not only does it
feel like the day is weighing you down, you don't
have that confidence.  The reality is, the day IS
weighing you down because you are operating in your
strength and not the Lord's, and the lack of
confidence comes from the fact you are in control
of your life and not Christ.

Sadly, some people go days, even weeks without
really dying to self, and it usually takes the
consequences of their poor choices during that time
to bring them back to the Lord.  Like I say often,
your way doesn't work, God's way works!  Let me give
you some advice out of my love for you.  You can
never run your life better than God can.  The sooner
you realize that, the more peace, joy, and abundance
you will know during this journey through life.

There is probably no more critical a message I will
ever share with you in living a victorious life in
Christ than the one today.  All of the benefits in
God's Word exist and are available to those who
believe, but there is a price to pay and that price
is our very life surrendered, yielded to the Lord. 
It is a choice, an act, that nobody can force you to
commit.  The important thing for you to hear today
is that it is not something you do just once and
forget about.  It is something that you must do DAILY! 
EVERY DAY!  WITHOUT FAIL!  Each morning when you
wake up, you have to make the conscious choice to die
to self, to surrender your life to Christ, and
walk in the "Spirit" instead of the "flesh."

I love you and care about you so much.  The difference
between a person who knows the Lord as their Savior
living a defeated life and a victorious life, lies in
what I am sharing with you today.  Please, save your
money.  You don't need to waste it listening to Tony
Robbins or the motivational speakers of the world lie
to you that you can do it on your own, and you don't
need spend it on books and tapes from preachers who
preach a feel good Gospel but forget to tell you about
the sacrifice involved.  The key to living a victorious
life in Christ lies in you waking up each morning and
making the conscious choice to die to self and allow
Christ to control your life.

The fact is, the Bible says that if you have asked
Christ into you heart and life by faith, it is no
longer your life, that it belongs to Him.  The Word
says we have been "bought with a price."  So in
essence, each day you are only giving the Lord what
already belongs to Him anyway.  Remember my message
last week on what really happens when we get saved? 
We are literally giving our life to Christ.  It is
no longer ours, but is now His. The reality is, each
morning when we wake up, we have to make the choice to
die to self so that Christ can live within us during
that day.  If we don't do this each and every day when
we wake up, we will soon find ourselves walking in the
"flesh" and not the "Spirit."

I will be praying for you today.    Praying that you
will sit down and read this message over and over. 
This is the meat and potatoes of the Word.  This is
where the rubber meets the road in regard to our
Christian walk. This is the part that nobody really
wants to talk about since we love the benefits of
being saved, but we really don't want to think about
the price that Jesus paid or the sacrifice we have to
make each day.  You MUST think about it since it is
the difference between you living a defeated life
and living a victorious life.  To live that
victorious life in Christ, to walk in His victory,
you have to die to self each day so that you are
walking in the "Spirit" and not the "flesh" so that
it is Christ, not you that lives.

In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller

***If I can help you in any way you can contact me
through my personal email at bkeller@liveprayer.com

***ARE YOU 100% CERTAIN WHERE YOU WILL SPEND
ETERNITY?  The fact is you will die one day.  At
that moment, you will either spend eternity with
the Lord or be cast into everlasting darkness
forever separated from God your creator.  To know
for certain you will be forever with Jesus, go to:
http://www.liveprayer.com/bdy_salvatn.html

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(C) Copyright 2006, Bill Keller Ministries.
All rights reserved

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May God bless you as you learn from this message!

Donald W. Mitchell, Your Dream Concierge

Copyright 2006 Donald W. Mitchell