If you make a compromise with surrender, you can remain interested in the abundant life, all the riches of freedom, love, and peace, but it is the same as looking at a display in a shop window. You look through the window but do not go in and buy. You will not pay the price—surrender.
~E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973)
We all beloved, on our own, are simply broken people. And we know it. When we maintain our home in this world, nothing quite works right. It has been said that all men live lives of quiet desperation. And apart from Christ, this is surely true.
There is only One Way to live any other way. We must give up our life altogether. Cast it on Christ alone. But, oh my, when we do that – a miracle happens. He pours out His very self into us. We become, in Him, finally able to live the Life we had always hoped for. We are free.
Free from desperation.
Free from anxiety.
Free from wishing.
Free from fear.
Free from sin.
Have you tasted it friend? He is able to do this in any life. He can do it very quickly, if you will yield to the Grace of G_d. Said simply: Give your life completely to Him, for He has made the way for a completely different, ultra-abundant Life. And yeah, for you linguists, this writer just mixed Greek and Latin rooted words 🙂 So, anyway…
Please know, talk like this is not just some sort of feel-good, theological stuff. His Life in us is absolutely real. Victory over the horrid-ness of life (both the old one in us – and the one still going on around us) is possible RIGHT NOW.
How do i know?
He has done this in my life. And He has done it in EVERY woman, man or child who has fully surrendered their being to Him. His Grace is not just some energy He packages up to help us ‘be good’ until we get to heaven. Grace is Him – in us – that we might live lives of profound righteousness, peace and joy in the power of His Spirit. Desperation, anxiety, wishing, fear and sin simply have no hold on us any more. These things require a fallen individual to fester and grow. And, in Him, we are made totally new.
The Kingdom of G_d is pretty much the exact opposite of the world in which we live. We must absolutely stop trying to gather life to ourselves. Doing this is like some hoarder keeping every scrap of trash – hoping to find value and comfort and validation in these material items. Rather, we gotta abandon our own lives fully, that there might be a chance there will be enough space to pack in the super-abundance G_d intends to put into our new lives in Him.
Anyone for some ‘letting go’ tonight?!?!
