18th
Learning about abandonment
“Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more clearly by recklessness.” Oswald Chambers
Wow. This is what I am learning. After being around the people of Malmelodi, I have a different/new understanding of how the Holy Spirit speaks. How we can experience that mighty power in our lives in undeniable and miraculous ways? If we abandon everything to His control. Satan’s attacks manifest themselves in different ways all over the world. For example, some believers and Christian converts in Africa or India may understand the spiritual world/spiritual warfare in a different way. His attacks may not be to make them doubt (too difficult), but can sometimes be physical and violent. In the U.S., as we are encapsulated by world and its concomitant toys/distractions/manufactured experiences, his most effective plight seems to use worldliness causing us to second guess everything.
If we let him get a foothold on our cynicism, this can be pernicious to our relationship with the Lord. He’ll use it big time.
I have found 3 ways to fight Satan’s confusing doubt cloud and to hear God speak SO clearly, opening up the flood gates of the holy spirit:
1. Abandoning to him. “I think he is pulling me in this direction/telling me to stop this/laying this on my heart…” Jump and then you’ll know. Your inclination will turn into revelation and He will pour out his peace and assurance on his children when He sees them abandon to him. He can and will rock our faces when we constantly push up against our opposition, not becoming desensitized by our surroundings, as spiritual warfare is a powerful and real thing! He is the Creator of the world, and all of the human beings in it. Why wouldn’t he want his beloved children to recklessly abandon to himself?
2. Sometimes my prayers are too vague. Pray specifically and He wil answer specifically!
3. Getting out of that court room! In 1 Corinthians 4:3, Paul says “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.”
At times, I have attached my justification chords to so many things other than Christ and his work on the cross. If I thought about taking my work away… No longer known as an artist and no longer making the work that I make… His ministry no longer at work through my paintings… only through my measily actions/my life… I am uncomfortable b/c my work obviously justifies my life. If the idea of a particular group of people becoming frustrated with/ dissatisfied with me rattles my sense of security, this means that there is a very real and dangerous identity chord that I have flung out in their direction. Once I whack all of those false justification chords in half, I find that the only relevant and real chord left is vertical and connects my identity to HIS!? Woah! I immediately walk out of every court room as court is now adjourned. I marvel at my own freedom and new identity. He loved me enough to make me beautiful, to live the life I should have lived and die the death I should have died. There’s my identity. It’s humbling to think that my ability to make work could be snatched away at any moment. It is only a mode through which I can glorify the one who made me beautiful by taking my identity up into himself.
Unless I understand this, I cannot really abandon myself to him. I had a chemistry teacher who would ask me to do certain things (study, cooperate, do homework) and I would just shoot her the stink eye and reluctantly obey (sometimes). How much more can we obey and abandon when the one to whom we are abandoning loves us with a love so deep and complete that we cannot conceive of it with our human minds!
