Surrender part 5
Yesterday I (think I) was talking about surrendering ourselves to love. Letting the love of Christ control us. Letting the Holy Spirit--our love receptor--lead and guide us into the truth that the Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hand. The truth that Daddy loves us. Letting the mind of Christ (that's already in us) BE in us. Knowing, and understanding, the difference between Adam--God's son--and Jesus--God's BELOVED Son. And the difference is NOT that God loved one and not the other. The difference is that while He loved them both, only Jesus KNEW it. Only Jesus let Himself BE LOVED. He surrendered to it instead of trying to earn it. Which, according to dictionary.com, is precisely what "surrender" means. "To yield (something) to the possession or power of another." In other words, "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" (Romans 12:1). There are a couple of things I want to draw out of this verse. First (and foremost) it is by the mercies of God that we are able to do this. We don't present our bodies a living sacrifice SO THAT God can do something with us. We present our bodies a living sacrifice BECAUSE He has DONE something with us. We don't MAKE ourselves holy and acceptable unto Him. HE MADE us holy and acceptable unto Him. He did it on the cross when He conformed us into the image of His Son. When He conformed us into the image that we were made in. When He showed us who we are by showing us who He is. By showing us the greatest expression of love that a man can have--which is to lay down His life for His friends... which is literally what Jesus did for us (and as us) on the cross. He showed us who we are by showing us what (and WHO) love is. Because that WHAT we are--we are loved--and that's WHO we are--we are love! And all we have to do is yield ourselves to it. Present ourselves to Him. Reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive unto God. We don't have any battles left to fight--except for the good fight of faith, which is BELIEVING we don't have any battles left to fight. We don't "sin not" so that we can awake to righteousness. We awake to righteousness AND sin not. Because if you're a believer, and if sin is unbelief, then by definition you can't sin. A believer can't unbelieve. Which is what John wrote in 1 John 3:9, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." You DO NOT sin because you CANNOT sin. Because you're not fighting sin. You've laid aside the weight and the sin that so easily besets you, and you've surrendered to a higher power. THE higher power. Love. And I'm not saying there are higher and lower powers. God is all-powerful, which doesn't mean "most powerful." It means He has ALL the power. Love has ALL the power. Love IS all the power! And, again, that's what we do because that's who we are. So, in the upside down, backwards economy of the Kingdom, we don't win by fighting. We win by surrendering. By knowing and believing that Daddy won the war, and we don't have any enemies left. The last enemy is death. And guess what: Jesus conquered that one too! So just give in. To love. Let Daddy love you, and love other with that same love!