{"id":4315,"date":"2009-04-15T23:54:30","date_gmt":"2009-04-16T03:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/april2009\/?p=67"},"modified":"2009-04-15T23:54:30","modified_gmt":"2009-04-16T03:54:30","slug":"the-inspiration-of-spiritual-initiative-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/2009\/04\/15\/the-inspiration-of-spiritual-initiative-3\/","title":{"rendered":"THE INSPIRATION OF SPIRITUAL INITIATIVE"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Arise from the dead.<\/p>\n<p>     &#8212; Ephesians 5:14<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>All initiative is not inspired. A man may say to you &#8211; &#8220;Buck up, take<br \/>\nyour disinclination by the throat, throw it overboard, and walk out<br \/>\ninto the thing!&#8221; That is ordinary human initiative. But when the<br \/>\nSpirit of God comes in and says, in effect, &#8220;Buck up,&#8221; we find that<br \/>\nthe initiative is inspired.<\/p>\n<p>We all have any number of visions and ideals when we are young, but<br \/>\nsooner or later we find that we have no power to make them real. We<br \/>\ncannot do the things we long to do, and we are apt to settle down to<br \/>\nthe visions and ideals as dead, and God has to come and say &#8211; &#8220;Arise<br \/>\nfrom the dead.&#8221; When the inspiration of God does come, it comes with<br \/>\nsuch miraculous power that we are able to arise from the dead and do<br \/>\nthe impossible thing. The remarkable thing about spiritual initiative<br \/>\nis that the life comes after we do the &#8220;bucking up.&#8221; God does not<br \/>\ngive us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. When the<br \/>\ninspiration of God comes, and He says &#8211; &#8220;Arise from the dead,&#8221; we<br \/>\nhave to get up; God does not lift us up. Our Lord said to the man<br \/>\nwith the withered hand &#8211; &#8220;Stretch forth thy hand,&#8221; and as soon as the<br \/>\nman did so, his hand was healed, but he had to take the initiative.<br \/>\nIf we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God<br \/>\nbecause He gives life immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arise from the dead. &#8212; Ephesians 5:14 All initiative is not inspired. A man may say to you &#8211; &#8220;Buck up, take your disinclination by the throat, throw it overboard, and walk out into the thing!&#8221; That is ordinary human initiative. But when the Spirit of God comes in and says, in effect, &#8220;Buck up,&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"twitterCardType":"","cardImageID":0,"cardImage":"","cardTitle":"","cardDesc":"","cardImageAlt":"","cardPlayer":"","cardPlayerWidth":0,"cardPlayerHeight":0,"cardPlayerStream":"","cardPlayerCodec":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purposedriven.ca\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}