And Every Virtue We Possess – Devotional for Thursday, December 30, 2010


We have natural talents. They vary person to person. Folks who are successful in life are those who correctly identify and develop those talents. and apply them to the puzzle of life. It is important to know what gifts we have been given and focus on those. The frustrated are those who try, maybe all their lives, to “develop” talents they have never been given. 
When we come to Christ it is “natural” to want to use these natural virtues in a new way, to glorify Christ. But this ignores the fact that we are new creations and the glory should not go to what we have been given naturally, but to glorify Him who know resides in us. We want to cling to our natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us in contact with the life of Jesus Christ— a life that can never be described in terms of natural virtues. It is the saddest thing to see people who are trying to serve God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them. They are depending solely on what they have by virtue of heredity. God does not take our natural virtues and transform them, because our natural virtues could never even come close to what Jesus Christ wants. No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands. But as we bring every part of our natural bodily life into harmony with the new life God has placed within us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.
And every virtue we possess
Is His alone.
Nick

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