Don't Miss the Subtle Opportunities to GAIN Oil!

7/12/2024

Satan takes the smallest DUMB things, and wants to make them into a daily dose of Jesus’ “temptations in the wilderness” from years of unbridled selfish practice: the brain running, imagining, fearing, wanting, lusting, comparing, resenting, smirking, beaming, wandering. All our stupid ways of leaking or dumping Holy Spirit OIL, that might have been available for fellowship with the Godhead and playing HIS part on the Earth, rather than the part of one more dumb feral mammal—living more for itself than even a horse or dog might.

Here was the ridiculous example that brought to mind how ABSURD our “tests in the wilderness” can be, and yet our feral untrained minds often MISS the Opportunity to GAIN OIL, rather than leak Oil.

Here’s how SUBTLE our 100 times a day wilderness tests can be, how easy to “fail” the Opportunity and lose the Oil.

On an airplane just now, I was “tempted” to think, not “Wow, I’d sure like to have the kingdoms of the earth” or “I’d sure like to turn this rock into bread”—but “I wonder why I know to bend the headrest to cradle my head, and I never see anyone else do it.”

Good grief.

Don’t miss the Tests to gain Oil by having an undisciplined mind! By habit, by laziness, by lust, or for any other reason or excuse!

So Subtle.

So Essential.

We have to recognize, have to learn, have to reject. We can’t stop talking about it until it stops happening every day, every night—as if we’ve never talked about it. “But I thought,” “But I heard you say,” “But what about them,” “But that’s not what I meant,” “But I’m trying so why don’t I get credit,” “God is so hard so if He won’t stop blasting me and reward me for trying, I may as well give up—I’ll never get there.”

Now. Listen carefully, please.

There is “no ROOM in the Inn”—no ROOM for Messiah in us, to change the world or anything else, if we won’t take action against “the radio” (“the motor”—the strange fire, the virgin’s “oil leak”).

("Radio" = our spinning, chattering, analytical noisy thoughts that are not of Christ -- our radio of self-indulgence, self-justification, accusation, and judgment, mopey, looping, fantasies, comparison, pride, fears, and more.)

The problem with “feeling sorry for yourself” is... wait for it... the word “SELF” is in the phrase—as the source of the “emotion” called “sorrow.” Any thought or decision or mood or response with SELF in it, will always be an INTENTIONAL step away from God, as surely as if Jesus had turned a stone into bread, rationalizing “but I’m hungry! And no one else has to do this! And God loves food because he created it! And and and. Self self self. Justification excuse compromise.”

FERAL mammal sloppiness.

YOU were not created for that, to leak Oil, like a junkyard car.

 

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