I'm a student again!

I've done it. I've taken the plunge again. I'm a student once more. Today I signed up for my first class from the Calvary Chapel Bible College school of distance learning. Whoo hoo! On-line education. Aint technology great?

The plan (God willing) is to get my Bachelor's of Biblical Studies from CCBC then perhaps a Master's Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy from George Fox University.

Until then, it's back to the books!

Today's "My Utmost for His Highest" daily devotional on Gen 22:9 was particularly challenging.  I loved how Oswald Chambers put it:

We seem to think that God wants us to give up things! God purified Abraham from this error, and the same process is at work in our lives. God never tells us to give up things just for the sake of giving them up, but He tells us to give them up for the sake of the only thing worth having, namely, life with Himself. It is a matter of loosening the bands that hold back our lives. Those bands are loosened immediately by identification with the death of Jesus. Then we enter into a relationship with God whereby we may sacrifice our lives to Him.

It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a "living sacrifice"— to let Him have all your strengths that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus (Romans 12:1). This is what is acceptable to God.

Pastor Gayle Erwin put it this way, "The problem with a living sacrifice is that it keeps crawling off the altar!" 

How I desire to be identified with the death of Jesus, so that I may be identified with His resurrected life!  May my life reflect the words of Paul when he said, "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live..." 

Lord, loosen the bonds that bind me to this earth and all it's deception so I may be usable in Your Hands. 
In Jesus Name and for His sake,
AMEN