The cross is “I” crossed out…. The cross is always ready, everywhere in wait for you. You cannot escape it wherever you run, for wherever you go, you carry yourself with you and will always find yourself. Turn yourself upwards, turn yourself inwards—everywhere you will find the cross, everywhere you must hold tight to patience if you will have inward peace and earn an everlasting crown.
~Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471)
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
~ paul, The Least of the Apostles, in Philippians 3
Oh beloved, it is true. We are wed to our Spouse. And He it is Who doth go before us. He will not leave us or fail us. We have nothing – ever – of which to be afraid. Yet we do fear. Oh, why is this?
We will not obey. We simply will not get the “I,” that really is no longer there, out of the way and let Him do His thing in our lives. Oh, we have never been let down by Him. It is just that we (really) do not yet believe in such a way, that we can simply can let go and audaciously believe that He is completely in control, and in no way is going to mess things up.
We get sick, and we begin to whine.
Our money gets a bit tight, and we begin to worry.
Our friends or family do not treat us as we hope, and we lick our wounds.
We lose a job, and we whimper about how things are going so badly.
Our circumstances dance about, and we complain about the confusion.
It seems that we have some sort of falsely-euphoric recall of how our lives were before He set us free. We, like the immature Hebrews of the exodus, are screaming for the leeks and onions of our past. We have not reckoned yet that the cross of Christ paid, both our debt, and crucified our old man.
What to do? Obey. And be very careful about what obedience actually means.
Obedience is a willing and joyful submission of myself to the purposes of somebody in authority over me. It is, most definitely, not doing lots of things to make somebody else happy, or to prove that I am submitting to their authority. No, obedience is the action that flows purely from the truth that the other is in control. It is a resting and yielding that yields action in accordance with the good pleasure of my master.
Peter, in chapter 3 of his first letter (and one of the more audacious believers ever!), puts obedience in such beautiful light.
