The following is an excerpt from My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. I was reading it this morning and it was speaking directly to me. I have changed it a bit to make it personal to me. (Changed the words "we" and "you" to "me" and "I"). I hope it speaks to you like it did to me.
"To become one with Jesus, I must be willing not only to give up sin, but also to surrender my whole way of looking at things. Being born again by the Spirit of God means that I must first be willing to let go before I can grasp something else. The first thing I must surrender is all of my pretense or deceit. What our Lord wants me to present to Him is not my goodness, honesty, or my efforts to do better, but real solid sin. Actually that is all that He can take from me. And what He gives me in exchange for my sin is real solid righteousness. But I must surrender all pretense that I am anything, and give up all my claims of being worthy of God's consideration.
Once I have done that, the Spirit of God will show me what I need to surrender next. Along each step of this process, I will have to give up my claim to my rights to myself. Am I willing to surrender my grasp on all that I possess, my desires, and everything else in my life? Am I ready to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?
I will suffer a sharp painful disillusionment before I fully surrender. When I really see myself as the Lord sees me, it is not the terribly offensive sins of the flesh that shock me, it is the awful nature of the pride of my heart opposing Jesus Christ. When I see myself in the light of the Lord...My desperate conviction hits home
for me.
Whenever I am faced with the question of whether or not to surrender, I need to make a determination to go on through the crisis, surrendering all that I have and all that I am to Him. Then God will equip me to do all that He requires of me."
Again for me it all comes back to surrender. When I choose not to surrender it is my own pride and arrogance saying to God that I have the power to take care of this. When I choose to surrender, He actually give me the power to do what he is asking. Surrender is focusing on Him and the lack of surrender is focusing on me. Surrender is to walk in humility and the lack of surrender is to walk in pride.
Thanks for letting me share.
Lonnie
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