Daily Bread 8/9/2025

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Email from Abiding Place     Daily Bread – August 9, 2025 (The Seventh Day – Genesis 2:1-3) Matthew 16:24 – Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. Denying Self There was nothing evil about Jesus. No matter how He was examined, everything was perfect. Yet, He denied His self. Though He was one with God and God incarnate, yet He showed us the perfect submission of a Son Who would live only by the mind and will of the Father. He would choose no earthly goal for His life other than to do the Father’s will. How much more must we deny ourselves? We have spent our lives imitating man, and now we must choose to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1 -KJV translation “followers” is better rendered as “imitators”). The mind and will of the self, which is not necessarily evil, must be submitted to the will of the Father. God the Father has chosen the best things for us, and we must do as He says if we are going to inherit them. When it comes to doing heavenly things, we of ourselves can do nothing (John 15:1-5). Within ourselves, we function out of a logical and rational thinking trained by life’s experiences and circumstances. There is nothing wrong with the logical and rational mind other than it is severely handicapped and grossly limited when we want to attend to the things belonging to the spiritual – such as walking on the water and raising of the dead. The rational and logical mind will never concede to the notion you can command the wind and the waves and they will obey. It will not expect enough money to pay your back taxes can be found in a fish’s mouth. To do these things, we must be taught of God. We must be willing to learn how to step beyond that which is limited to a natural realm. Remember the first time you went swimming and began to adjust to a whole new dimension of movement? It may even have felt scary! Now God wants to move us past the elements of the earthly into the dimensions of the heavenly, but we have to be willing to step beyond the limitation of what we can physically and mentally do of ourselves and learn how to rely on the Holy Spirit. Blessings, Pastor Mark Spitsbergen