I work with a population that has many times given up. Giving up is not in the plan of God. Surrender, however, now that brings us home.
Few of us are willing participants. We seldom seem to have the requisite white flag when one is called for. Surrender often feels like dying and so we shun the experience.
Surrender lets us change sides, first as captives (but captives of love) and then as friends. Surrender empties out the bowl and waits on the Lord of the Feast. Not for what He brings but for Himself.
Long ago Our Father's love made provision to "rest" in our lives, to be
pleased to be there. We are in the season of His pleasure if our days
are being emptied of own wisdom, our own efforts.
It seems such a contradiction that hungry men and women come to the Mission to be filled and our ambition is to see them empty. It is not. The things of God cannot fill what has not been offered, what is too full of things not of God.
It is important for us to be the example of God-filled men and women to those we serve. To be transparent, authentic, genuine. We have to be the change we want to see in others. Surrender gets us there.
We can't be gnat sifters or camel swallowers either. It must be Christ radiantly loving the world from our hearts enamored of Him. Surrender.
God's economy is so perfect. The swap so momentous. The transformation breathtaking. The method so simple. Surrender.
Surrendered or not we cannot make Him love us more but surrendered His love is perfected through the life of Christ in us. That love is the medicine the world needs. When we discover the holy-empty which leads to the magnanimous God-life available to us it is life changing and not just our life that changes.
Oswald Chambers says it beautifully, "Genuine total surrender is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself."
My heart is a white flag.
-John LaMantia
It seems such a contradiction that hungry men and women come to the Mission to be filled and our ambition is to see them empty. It is not. The things of God cannot fill what has not been offered, what is too full of things not of God.
It is important for us to be the example of God-filled men and women to those we serve. To be transparent, authentic, genuine. We have to be the change we want to see in others. Surrender gets us there.
We can't be gnat sifters or camel swallowers either. It must be Christ radiantly loving the world from our hearts enamored of Him. Surrender.
God's economy is so perfect. The swap so momentous. The transformation breathtaking. The method so simple. Surrender.
Surrendered or not we cannot make Him love us more but surrendered His love is perfected through the life of Christ in us. That love is the medicine the world needs. When we discover the holy-empty which leads to the magnanimous God-life available to us it is life changing and not just our life that changes.
Oswald Chambers says it beautifully, "Genuine total surrender is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself."
My heart is a white flag.
-John LaMantia
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