self-denial Archives - Make No Provision

You Need a Willing Spirit Plus a Subdued Body | Matthew 26:41

by Alan Sharpe October 5, 2022

When your spirit is willing and your body is under your control, you win. And you please your Lord.

by Alan Sharpe October 5, 2022

Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 26:41

Victory over sexual sin doesn’t come just spiritually, and it doesn’t come with human effort alone. Your victory isn’t all up to God, and it isn’t all up to you, either. To forsake pornography and any other sexual sin, you require a willing spirit and a subdued body.

When the disciples fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked them for having willing spirits but unwilling bodies. Jesus asked the disciples to stay awake and to watch with Him as he prayed. But they fell asleep. Their spirits wanted to stay awake, but their bodies wanted to sleep. Their bodies won the battle, they fell asleep, and they disobeyed their Lord.

The lesson for you and me is that we must bring our bodies into subjection if we are to obey our Lord. We must subdue them, discipline them, make t

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Consecration

“Only by death to self can we be lost in God.” || Madam Guyon

by Alan Sharpe August 20, 2022

Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.

by Alan Sharpe August 20, 2022

It is only by a total death to self we can be lost in God. Self-seeking is the gate by which a soul departs from peace; and total abandonment to the will of God, that by which it returns.

Excerpted from Letters of Madam Guyon by Madam Guyon. Public domain.

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Sanctification

“Think often of the self-denial of the martyrs.” || George Whitfield

by Alan Sharpe July 2, 2022

If we have the same nature to change, why should not we lead the same lives as they did?

by Alan Sharpe July 2, 2022

big jump to reach the top, success concept

Think often on the lives of the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and the noble army of martyrs; who by a constant looking to the author and finisher of our faith, have fought the good fight, and are gone before us to inherit the promises. View again and again, how holily, how self-denyingly, how unblameably they lived: And if self-denial was necessary for them, why not for us also? Are we not men of like passions with them? Do we not live in the same wicked world as they did? Have we not the same good spirit to assist, support, and purify us, as they had? And is not the same eternal inheritance reached out to us, as was to them?

And if we have the same nature to change, the same wicked world to withstand, the same good spirit to help, and the same eternal crown at the end; why should not we lead the same lives as they did? Do we think they did works of supererogation [the performance of more work than duty requires]? If not, why do not we do as they did? Or why does your own church set apart festivals to commemorate the deaths

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Temptation

“Sin appears in the mind, and can be conquered there.” || Amy Carmichael

by Alan Sharpe February 2, 2022

We have been given the power to close the door of the mind.

by Alan Sharpe February 2, 2022

All the great staining temptations, to selfishness, ambition, and other strong sins that violently affront the soul, appear first in the region of the mind, and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small and by reliance upon the word of the Spirit of Truth. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” It is as though He said, “Learn to live in your will, not in your feelings.”

Excerpted from Gold by Moonlight by Amy Carmichael. Public domain.

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Sanctification

“Soul poverty is the route to deeper knowledge of God.” || A. W. Tozer

by Alan Sharpe December 14, 2021

The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing.

by Alan Sharpe December 14, 2021

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the “poor in spirit.” They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word “poor” as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. “Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as mere Bible teaching to be stored away in

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