Recommended Read - So, You want to be like Christ? - Charles R. Swindoll

I must say out of all the books that I have read so far (outside the Bible), this book has truly changed me for the better! God put this book in my life just at the right time. My desire is to be more like Christ, and less like this world. I long to reflect and see what true change this book brings into my life. I know this, I have already started to see real fruit coming out of my life from the pages of this book. Being a Christian I understand what Jesus demands of me. Being a true follower of Christ is hard, but also a very joyful experience. Walking with Christ is a delight to my heart, a comfort this world will never bring me. I agree with the book, He patiently waits for you to sacrifice yourself in small amounts, one decision at a time, one day at a time, so that you might enjoy an ever-increasing intimacy with Him. And this deepening intimacy with Him will inevitable make you more like Christ.

I wanted to also share a portion of the book with you that truly spoke to my heart. It comes from page 152.

If you truly are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Spirit of God dwelling within you. Yet believers also have an old nature - a habitual, sinful way of thinking - that Paul called "the flesh." Let me put it straight. The flesh is a self-serving, nonbelieving, godless mind-set that live by animal instinct. Its nature stance is facing away from God. Its innate priority is self-preservation. The lens through which the flesh sees the world is "eat or be eaten." It's the pattern of living that you inherited when you were born, that the world taught you as you matured. To make matters worse, it comes as natural to you as breathing. The Holy Spirit notwithstanding, the flesh remains within us, never improving, always ready to be satisfied.

So are you satisfying your flesh with the life you are living, or are you satisfying God? Living your life as a sacrifice to God as we are called to do in Romans 12:1-2? Lets be real for a minute, who do you serve?

But all in all, this is a book that I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone that desires to truly be like Christ! No pretenders allowed in this book. Through this book, God is moving in my life like never before. Its like the first time God's word came into my life....Sharp like a double edge knife...cutting right down to the point of conviction.

Jesus "did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped."

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

-Philippians 2:5-11 (NASB)

Jesus "did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped." Through Jesus deserved all the respect, all the worship, all the adoration, all the fear due Him as God, He let it all go. He released His grip on all of it.

Further, "He emptied Himself." While retaining every aspect of His deity, Jesus relinquished the independent use of His divine attributes during His earthly sojourn. Before the Son became a flesh-and-blood man, He had absolute autonomy as God, being coequal, coeternal, and coexistent with the Father. When He became a man, He voluntarily gave up the independent use of His divine attributes; and while on earth, He submitted to the Father. He waited on the Father for His will, for His timing. He followed the Father's guidance as to where He would go and what He would do and what He would say and when He would do those things. He relinquished the voluntary use of His divine prerogatives. He gave up what was rightfully His for the sake of others -- including you and me.*

*So, You want to be like Christ? By Charles R. Swindoll (Pg.89)