Abandonment...Really?

Lost in our age is a boundless abandonment to much of anything.  We have grown so accustomed to instant messaging and continual entertainment that we grow weary when any vision or mission crosses our perseverance threshold.  Profit margins are now measured by level of effort and degree of boredom.   If anything requires too much of us or does not make us happy, we give up on it.  A holy life is superficially regarded as unattainable, unreasonable.  Given the volume of meta-messages bombarding our conscious thinking, we cannot make heads or tails of what is important to us.  It all is a blur of instantaneous provocations and titillations.  Is it any wonder that some just jump ship; the drowned life a welcome relief to the bombarded one?  Contemptuous humanists mock the Christian who waits upon the Lord because she seems so mediocre, so juvenile.  The contemplation of the scriptures extended past intellectual stimulation is absurdly dissolute for the mind absent of any real hunger for God.  Depravity is now flipped around on its head; faith and purity are the new perversion.  The corrupted soul is the one waiting upon the Lord . The  cost of waiting upon Christ seems monstrous.   To walk in the Spirit is not a moment of exalted rapture but rather a day in and day out communion with the Lord who does speak and certainly leads.  We read the scriptures not to get something out of them but to be given up to them.  We pray, not to attain but to be with God in His very presence.  We sing songs of praise not to be entertained but to live within the mercy and joy of the Living God.  Who has really abandoned himself to Christ?  Who has become accustomed to the voice of God and fallen in love with the One who speaks?  Who has made his life holy in the wash of the Living Word?  Who has gained the treasure of being consecrated and filled with the joy of true Christian living?  Who has been given The Gift and loved the hand that held it?  Are you too callous to be aware of what great love awaits you if you would just  wait for God a moment longer?  Do you have the patience needed to stay where you are so that Jesus Christ might meet you?  Does it seem the greatest good to be with Jesus and give yourself over to Him?  Would it make you happy to gain just one more bit of God in you?  Have you discovered the sweet perfume of holy abandonment?

 Peter said to him, "We have left all we had to follow you!"   Luke 18:28 NIV

The Bloody Coup

Until we see the fullness of our depravity, taste  the sludge spewing out from the depths of our heart, we will not grasp the enormity of risk Jesus took to save us.  The humiliation we feel at the sight of our temper spewing poisonous wrath upon some stunned family member or careless co-worker is the edge at which we can get at the real crisis we face.  When a well-shrouded lust takes control of our moral piety, we are at the precipice of the most critical discovery.     We are filthy and corrupt at the core and it is needless trying to make something of our selves.  Our critical need is not self-assessment and adjustment; it is the rush of life Jesus gives us at the Cross.  We are not fixable; but we are destructible.  The sooner we see our true condition, the quicker we will be able to turn away from bandages when we need resurrection.  Jesus did not come to fix us but rather to raise us from the dead.   We are irretrievably ruined by sin and that becomes obvious when we blow up at our four year-old for smearing lipstick on her face just as we are about to leave for the wedding.    The entire town of Sodom may have been self-righteously unaware of the filth it was gathering but Lot knew what was there and although he tried his best to ignore the elephant in the room, he at the point of destruction had to face it squarely.    You are not fixable, but you are redeemable.  The difference in the two is as wide as the grave.  Only the life of Christ can remake the cities leveled in your heart by sin.  Only He can give you life that will turn sinless as He works all through you.  You will never be able to live with the filth inside you; at least not like the lovely woman going into Victoria's Secret hoping to lure her boss away from his wife.  You won't be able to make heads or tails of the tumult you know rages within you until you pursue Christ for your condition.  The woman who grasped after Jesus' garment to stem the flow of blood knew what the rest of the gawking crowd did not but you must decide is so as she did.  Jesus really is the only hope you have and you must choose  to reach after Him yourself and ignore the skeptics who blindly disregard how badly they are bleeding too.

For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!   Romans 5:10-11 NIV