"Letting God In"
Daniel Valles

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 want to talk to you about four main things. 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 that you can't do anything without Him. The truth is, God can run our life far better than we can. That's one reason we got saved in the first place!.. 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 couldn't have done by himself. The Lord want to use you, and He has a perfect plan for your life. We will look more into that plan tomorrow.

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 trust, 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 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. Even before the world was spoken into existence, he knew who would be saved, and we were chosen to be 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 thirteen, 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 hand our life over to Him. As you know, nobody hands over something 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 save din 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 and career) to Christ. When we accepted Christ as our Savior, we did so in faith. We have faith and trust that God can control our life nicely and for His glory. We trust in God to control our life for a good cause (God's Will), because nobody in their right mind hands their life over to a dictator. That dictator is Satan... and he wants to use us to ruin our life and 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 that 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 that God doesn't see the whole picture. We may see what we think is a better way, but it's not God's way. Once we see t, we may take it. I don't care which way you go, any way 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 not really see where you are going (talk about trust!). That also means that whatever trails you see on the side, are the one's that have just come into your view., the trails that the guide has passed. Following Christ means 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 God's part, but it wasn't! In 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 had happened, and Paul wasn't there! That jailor would have killed himself! God put Paul in the right place at the right time.