Life on the Highest Plane
The Life Yielded - Why?
Cleansing
Christ has the right to exempt you from His property; He is Lord and He has the right to command you to yield. But Christ's way is to constrain by love rather than to conquer by force. So He beseeches us by the innumerable mercies of God of which we are daily the recipients to yield ourselves to Him.
Romans 12:1, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
Yielding is the glad, joyous, willing response of love to Love. "We love him because he first loved us." Bought with a price, "therefore" we gladly glorify Him in our body and spirit, which are His. "I beseech you" - I have given My life in death for you, will you not give yours in life for Me? True yielding is just the utter abandonment of love. It is the call of the Bridegroom "Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away," to which the bride joyfully responds, "I am my beloved's and his desire is toward me."
Oh! my friend, does this not take the "must" out of surrender for you? Does it not answer the question "Is it safe?" Have you only thought of yielding in the light of what you would have to give up? To yield does involve a giving up but it means giving up what really is not yours; it means giving up something only to get something of infinitely greater worth; yes, it means giving up something that He needs for His use to the One we love best; more than all it means giving up something to the One who loves us with a love so great that He died for us and now waits to bestow upon us all the exhaustless treasures that are ours in Him. Can we not trust "the Man who died for us"?
Romans 8:32, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
1 Corinthians 3:21-23, "Therefore let no man glory in men, For all things are yours; Whether Paul or Apollos, or Cepheus, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's."
"Surrender taken alone is a plunge into a cold void. When it is a surrender to the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me it is the bright home coming of the soul to the seat and sphere of life and power."
The Life Yielded - What?
We have seen what yielding is - the transference of the ownership and control of the life from self to Christ. But self will relinquish nothing except under compulsion. So it is necessary to understand at the outset just what the full measurement of a yielded life is.
May we clear the atmosphere by saying what yielding is not. It is not mere subscription to a creed; nor is it a giving of one's self to a certain kind or field of service; nor is it merely stripping the life of certain evil or questionable practices. How many a person has said, "I am afraid to yield myself wholly to the Lord for I know He will make me believe something I can't believe, or will ask me to go somewhere that I do not want to go, or will rob me of something that I want to keep." To such yielding is altogether a negative things while in reality it is essentially positive. God wants us. It is the whole of ourselves that He asks us to yield to Him that our whole life may be lived unto the will of God.
Romans 6:13, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God."
2 Corinthians 8:5, "And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God."
1 Peter 4:2, "That he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God."
Then God specifies the measurement a bit more explicitly lest we be satisfied merely with 'the saving of our soul" or "the giving of our heart to the Lord." It is the easiest thing in the world to use the phraseology of consecration while missing the reality of it. It is possible to deceive ourselves by surrendering the invisible and intangible thing while holding on to the visible and tangible. So God asks for the body as well as for the spirit of the soul. Read again Romans 12:1.
God leaves no loophole in this matter of yielding. He knows full well how the beauty of a life may be marred and its testimony nullified by the unyieldedness of even one member of the body. Who can read the Epistle of James and not know that many a life fails of complete surrender through an unyielded tongue? What possibilities for covetousness through an unyielded eye? What paths of wickedness and worldliness are open before unyielded feet~ What a catchall for gossip, slander and idle talk, is an unyielded voice! God specifies the measurement of surrender and it reaches out to include every member of your body. "Yield your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." "Yourselves, your bodies, your members."
It is all-inclusive. Nothing is omitted and nothing is exempt. God has sanctified our whole personality. He has set it all apart as His own personal possession and for His own use. Our consecration is the counterpart of God's sanctification. God has taken us to be His own: He has said, "Thou art min." We yield ourselves as those belonging unto Him and sanctify Christ, as Lord, in our hearts and say, "Lord, I am Thine, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
~Ruth Paxson~
(continued with # 8)
No comments:
Post a Comment