Called Unto Holiness # 10

A Choice Between Sovereigns

You and I are called to make a choice of sovereigns. As a sinner we had to choose between our sins and our Saviour; now as a Christian we must make the choice between the continued sovereignty of that old mater, sin, and that of our new Master, Christ.

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof" (Romans 6:12).

Have you made this choice? Has it been a deliberate, final choice of Christ as the sole Sovereign over your life? If not, will you do it today?

Christ Yielded to as Lord

Having chosen Christ as our Master, then He commands us to yield to Him as Lord.

"Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God (Romans 6:13).
"Yield yourselves," spirit, soul, and body. Yield your whole human personality to Christ. Have you done it? Or have you parceled out a little bit and told Him what He could have, and what you intended to reserve for yourself?

"Yield your members." In order that there may be no loophole, He goes on to say we are to yield every member of the body - the eyes, the ears, the feet, the hands, the lips, the tongue. Have you done it? Perhaps someone here is living in defeat because of one unyielded member of the body. An unyielded tongue, what unlimited harm it can do! Here is our Lord's command, have we obeyed it? Have we yielded ourselves entirely to Him? If not, will you do it now?

Then we must yield everything that has any relationship whatsoever to our life, all our habits, our practices, our appetites, our pleasures, our championships, our homes, our possessions, our children, our money.

Last year, after a message on yielding, a gentleman came up to me and said, "Miss Paxson, tonight I have yielded my old pipe." Can you not see that old pipe? The Lord had asked him for it, perhaps many a time. He thought he had yielded it, but he took it home and put it up on he shelf. What he ought to have done with the old pipe was have thrown it, with everything that appertained to it, into the fire. That is yielding, but, when he saw the old pipe, perhaps he was tempted to think, "May I not take down the old pipe just once again for one more puff?"

Have you yielded your old pipe? It may not be one you put in your mouth, but you may have a blood relation to it, that you do puff away at, which the Lord is asking you to yield. This is the shame of even many Christian women today! How can you distinguish a woman of the Church, the Body of Christ from a woman of the world, the body of satan, if she is puffing a cigarette? What is there to mark her off as belonging to the glory of life?

What is your old pipe, my friend? I will tell you what it is. It is that thing for which the Lord has been asking you for weeks and months, maybe for years, and you will not give it up; that little insignificant thing that is not worth more than the puff of a pipe, and you will not give it up for this eternal Son of God, that His glory may be manifested more fully in you. That is why He brought you here; to get rid of that old pipe. I do not know what it is, but He knows and you know. It is that which is keeping you in defeat and it is that which is hindering Him from manifesting His glory in your life today. Will you yield that old pipe to the Lord Jesus Christ? Will you yield yourself, your members, all that you are and have, to the Lord now?

~Ruth Paxson~

(continued with # 11 - "The Right Adjustment to the Holy Spirit")