Read Eph. 1:11-13

This devotional will discuss briefly about the subject of letting God in your life. It isn't really talking so much about the matter of letting God in your life in regard to salvation...this is mostly after you are saved. I will talk about four main things in this lesson. When letting God in your life, you need to accept the truth. When I talk about letting God in your life, I'm talking about not turning your back on Him, but letting God rule your life.

When you turn around and give God the controls, you are accepting the truth. What kind of truth? The truth that God is superior to you, and you can't do anything with out Him. The truth is, God can run our lives far better than we can. That's one reason we got saved.  We needed God's help to save us! When you give your life to Christ to control, he controls, not you.  Paul let Christ run his life, and it turned out that Christ did a work in Paul, that he could not have done by himself.

The Lord wants to use you, and He has a perfect plan for your life. Ephesians 1:11-13 says, "In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise."  When we obtained salvation, we obtained an inheritance and rewards in Heaven.  But, while we're still here on Earth, we can live the life that God has planned for us.

In Ephesians 1:4-6 it says, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. To the praise and glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." We (Christians) were chosen out of the billions of people that we were to be saved, even before he created the world. (And that was the second thing He created!). Even before the world was spoken into existence, we were chosen to adopted out of the world of sin, and into God's family. Why? That we should be to the praise of His glory, because we trusted in Christ. If you look in verse 13, it tells us that "ye also trusted after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation."
After we are saved, we need to trust God to run our life to His glory. Just hand over your life to Christ, and hand over your self and time, too! II Corinthians 1:9 says, "But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead." Before we were saved, we were spiritually dead, and we couldn't run our life efficient enough for us to really trust in the direction of our life, so we needed Christ to raise us from our spiritually dead state. We had to hands our life to Him. As you know, nobody hands over anything dear to themselves to someone who wants to control your life. But, remember that Christ has planned our entire life even before there was a planet to live on! Handing our life to Christ is better than handing it over to Satan! Satan ruined our life, and that's why we needed to be saved in the first
place. People today are handing their lives over to Christ for a better chance to honor Him. How do they do it? It takes trust—trust to hand over your most precious asset (your life) to Christ. When we accepted Christ as our Saviour, we did so in faith. We have faith and trust that God can control our life nicely. We trust God to control our life for a good cause (God's will), because nobody in their right mind hands their life to a dictator. That dictator is
Satan....and he wants to use us to ruin our life and our testimony. Satan doesn't want to see you hand over your life to Christ. Although Christians are going to Heaven already, Satan can use you to "scare" away possible converts with your ruined testimony (courtesy of Satan). If you don't have Christ controlling your life, you can be sure, someone else is. We need to trust God to control our life and accept his superiority. We also need to accept his authority.
Once we have accepted the truth and trusted God, we need to accept his authority. We may hand our life to Christ, but sometimes we may think God doesn't get the whole picture. We may see a better way, but it's not God's way. We may always see what appears to be a shortcut or safer way. Once we see it, we may take it. I don't care which way you go, anyway outside of God's way is the wrong way! John 21:19b says, "And when he had spoken this, he saith unto him, Follow me." Whenever you follow someone, where are you in relation to the guide? Behind him. That means that you can't really see where you're going (talk about trust!). That also means that whatever trails you see on the side, are one's that have just come into your view.....the trails that the guide has passed. Following Christ mean trusting in his guiding authority. Once you give God the controls to your life, you have to let him control you. Paul accepted Christ's authority and went to jail many times. You might think that was a mistake on Christ's part, but it wasn't. Acts 16:32-33, it talks about the fact that Paul was able to witness to a jailor and his entire household! Image what would have happened if that earthquake happened, and paul wasn't there? That jailor would have killed himself! God put Paul in the right place at the right time.
 

.....The Lord is the only authority in our life. And, the only authority in our life is the one we let control our life. Make sure you' give God the controls to your life.
Next, we need to find out if we are building a "wall". We need to accept God's authority and trust. Whenever we don't accent Christ's authority and disobey, we arid anoihev urick 10 that wail, i iaims 00:18,19 says, "// / regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Bin verily God hath heard me; he hath attended to the voice of my prayer." Whenever we don't accept Christ's authority and disobey, we add another brick to a wall that's being built between us and God. Every time we deliberately disobey God, we are getting farther and farther away.
Many times we build and build... sometimes we build and tear down.., but when we build, it's hard on us and God. When God realizes that you're building a wall between us and God....it's like your best friend all of a sudden decides not to talk to you. When we build walls, we are the one who turns their back on the other. Building a wall between you and God is your saying that you don't want God in your life....and when there is a wall between you and God. He can't controi your life.

When you do build a wall, it's blocking God out, and letting Satan in! When you build the wall, the devil will have a heyday. He'll ruin your life and testimony. But what do we do? I John 1:9 says, "// we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." All you have to do is confess your sins, ask God for forgiveness, and then the wall will come down... and Christ will come in. When you build the wall, the devil will have a heyday. He'll ruin your life and testimony. All you have to do is ask God to control your life, not Satan.
When we want God to come into our life, we need to accept the truth. The truth that God is far superior to you and that God can control your life better that you. You also need to trust God to control our life. Trust will put you at ease knowing Christ is at your controls. We also need to accept the responsibility of the job Christ has given us.
We are responsible to the world. We hold the salvation of the world in our possession./.and it's up to us to give it to others. Only God can control us the right way. We need to know if we've built a wall between us and Christ. If we don't see God's work in our lives...we have built a wall. We need to accept his truth, trust, and our responsibility. Praying to God to remove the communication barriers will enable Him to do a work in you.