There is an amazing sanity in Jesus Christ that shakes the foundations of death and hell, no panic, absolute dominant mastery over everything—such a stupendous mastery that he let men take his strength from him.
~Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do….. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are One, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, speaking to His Father in John 17
Oh beloved, it is true. Jesus prayed and spoke for us with the same authority He used in creation. With a few words, He spoke the universe into being. Light and life and time and space all came about at His command.
… and we still worry. As one of my favorite preachers has said, “some Christians act like they have graduated from the ‘University of Weird’.”
Why do we do it?
It does seem that the answer is astoundingly simple. The issue is control. Who are we going to truly let have control of our life? Oh yeah, we tout the idea of surrender to others around us, but don’t we hedge our bets and hold on to the one last bit of anxiety?
Can we see it? The problem is never the amount of baggage we still hold onto. We might be 99.999% surrendered to Him, and still be falling over our feet in failure every day. No, the problem is that we hold on to the rights to anything at all. In fact, it would be less hypocritical for us to just let our sin all hang out, rather than pretend we are doing wonderfully on the “victory” scale.
Because there is no scale.
He wants everything.
May this fool of a writer be blunt for a moment? When we give our lives to Jesus Christ, we are handing over our very lives to the One who spoke our universe into existence and formed us from the dust. And in surrendering to this Authority, we are giving up any right to anything at any time and anywhere – ever again. Said simply, G_d wants your all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. And, once He has it – He will not give it back.
So, even more bluntly, if we are still dwelling in a place of worry, we may want to review very carefully whether we have truly given Him everything and boldly ask for His grace to help in our time of need. For even a modicum of desire for control is a sign of a much deeper problem within us.
Beloved, our G_d is arbitrary. There is no room for negotiation. However, He is not capricious – He is not going to squish us like a bug or something. YES, He will destroy anything in us that is not of Him. But the destruction is not for our ruin. Rather, it is that His authoritative prayer for us might be fulfilled. We are to be one with Him; and this is a VERY good thing.
Like the old Scotsman said, “Aye, absolute surrender. That’s the one thing.”
