If we were, just for a moment, to talk about a few of the most powerful actions and ideas available to us then my top four would be 1) love in action, 2) prayer, 3) surrender and 4) forgiveness. In these, Jesus Christ is our model and we can be assured that in order to become more Christlike we must work towards being excellent at all four.
And I say “work towards” because we don’t start our walk with Christ being strong in these areas and none of us, no matter how long we have been a child of God, are perfect in all four. We’ve all got work to do or perhaps it’s more accurate to say we must continue(or begin) to surrender our selves to the Holy Spirit so that He can work in us and on us. It is the work of God to change us, it is the responsibility of the person to surrender themselves so that they may be changed.
(So there’s number 3 from our list, right there, and please bear with me even if this is not in numerical order!) Just as Christ surrendered his position in heaven and left his throne to come and live as a man, and just as Christ then surrendered his life for all so must we surrender our rights and desires to Him. Our surrender is what allows us to accept Jesus Christ as savior and Lord and it is our daily (or even hourly) surrender that allows us to continue to grow and know Him better.
Closely related to surrender is forgiveness(number 4 from our list). God forgives us of our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness and this forgiveness is applied to our past, present and future! The entirety of the sin debt of every man, woman and child who has ever lived or will ever live has already been paid for. The enormity of that act is difficult to comprehend but what it means for us is that we no longer have the right to withhold forgiveness from anyone or anything. God forgave it all, every last sin, at the exact moment that the sin debt was laid on His only son Jesus. For us, who have been so forgiven, we are now free to surrender our right to retribution, hatred, revenge and all thoughts of “getting even”.
Not only that, we must forgive ourselves and not hold on to guilt or failure. And sometimes, we even need to forgive a situation or circumstance. Sometimes things happen that aren’t in our plan and are not welcomed or appreciated and if we aren’t careful we can develop bitterness that will poison our lives and everything that we touch. God’s children must forgive and the only way this can be done is in the power of the Holy Spirit and in Jesus’ name. We simply lack the ability to forgive and let go apart from the power of God in us.
So then, how do we access the power of God in us and live lives that are filled with the Holy Spirit? We do this through prayer (number 2, here it is!) and meditation on God’s Word. The Bible says we are to “pray continuously” and that we should “always, in everything, make our requests known to God with thanksgiving” and then, once we’ve done that, we can start to be amazed at what God can do through us and around us. Prayer is powerful, not because of the words we say but because of who we are praying to; Jesus, in whom we live and move and have our being. When we choose to communicate and cooperate with God it will always make an eternal and life changing difference.
And all of this, everything that we do, must be done out of a Christlike love for all people and to show love in action (number 1, here we are!) Not love in feeling, which ebbs and flows and is only based on human emotion, but love like Christ has for all people and love that motivated Him to give up his own life to save all mankind. Again, only God can change us to have a love like that and only through prayer, surrender and forgiveness can we share it with others.
God’s love never fails and never changes and He chooses to share it with us. All that he asks is that we love Him in return by the way that we live our lives and the way that we treat others.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 1:13 (NIV)