"If I Give It All"
performed by Will Reagan and United Pursuit band
written by Will Reagan
Lyrics:*
If I give it all to You, will You make it all new?
If I open up my hands, will You fill them again?
*Source
Just two repeated, life-changing lines.
"If I Give It All" performed by Will Reagan and United Pursuit band written by Will Reagan Lyrics:* If I give it all to You, will You make it all new? If I open up my hands, will You fill them again? *Source
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Every once in a while it does some good to reflect on why we're doing something. Why am I writing this blog, for example? I don't know if the Lord is using it. Sometimes I wonder. Occasionally I've had feedback to say that He is, so that's good enough. It's up to Him what happens or doesn't happen as a result of these weekly scratchings.
Here's what I wrote in my very first blog post, back in March of this year: I am now head over heels in love with my God. I live to praise Him and to know Him. I've been a Christian for 40 years, and until recently I had never realized what the Christian life was meant to be. That, in a nutshell, is what keeps me posting here. Whether anyone is listening or not, I keep calling out from the rooftops to say how wonderful He is. Sometimes I call it out by kvetching first and then snapping back to His reality, which is becoming my new reality, my terra firma. I didn't find this new solid ground by trying to give up my own territory. I simply fell deeply in love with my God. And true love is surrender. It's all-consuming. When I began praising Him in those very dark hours (as mentioned in my initial few posts), I had no idea anything would happen -- I just needed a way to endure what I was going through. I had no idea He wanted me to live my life wrapped so intimately within His arms. I had no idea He wanted to recalibrate my heart and mind to align with His own; if I had, it might have terrified me. Now it comforts me. As I've said here before, I didn't do any of this. No "today I must," "today I must not" stuff. My heart gradually just began to surrender to Him, as I praised Him. He gave me the desire to know Him. He fed my longing. All I did was stand in front of Him and say "I'm here." He then did me the honor of anchoring me in solid scriptural teaching -- some of which I'd forgotten, some of which was new to me -- so that I wouldn't be grasping around at whatever might be posing as His truth. So that my praises wouldn't just be words of emotion, but founded on a knowledge of and a reverence for the Rock Himself. I don't know yet what He has in store for me. To be honest, many days I feel like my life has been a complete waste. I made one spectacularly bad judgment call long ago, and now many things I grew up taking for granted are out of my reach. So, OK. Maybe they always will be. But God the I AM knows all this. And He's up to something wonderful behind the scenes. Perhaps during my lifetime He'll never restore what was lost, or never replace it with phenomenal alternatives. But He Himself is mine, and He wants me to know Him deeply. So I continue to come before Him day after day to say, "I'm here." A forgiven Eve, restored to the garden, meeting her God in the cool of the day. The fervency of my singing has died down. But the depth and steadiness of the relationship I have with God have intensified. I have a much fuller assurance of the Father's hand on my life. I've seen some amazing things, but the most amazing thing is that He won't give up on me. He's in this for life -- which in His case (and as a result, in mine) is a very, very, very long time. Yesterday I posted a song by Will Reagan and United Pursuit band. Just now, on the band's blog, I found the most refreshing and uplifting call to arms I've ever read in my life. It's written by Nathan Fray, one of the band members. I've posted a link to it below.
I hope it stirs your soul like it did mine, and gives you a vision of the mighty, death-busting force God is raising up in these last days within hearts that are completely sold out to Him. Nathan Fray's July 5, 2012, blog post: "His Story" (P.S. Nathan has other very inspiring posts on that same blog, if you feel like exploring.) Self-explanatory. And boy, do I need this today. OK, every day.
Listen closely -- the message is pretty much perfect. YouTube video "Climb" performed by Will Reagan and United Pursuit Band written by Will Reagan Earlier today, I read something very callously worded on a reputable Christian informational website. The wording that bothered me had to do with hell. The context was a very painful life and death issue that many people struggle with, so the statement is probably being read every day by people who are in great pain. I immediately e-mailed the person in charge of the site. I said, yes, the Lord was very clear about hell, but He showed compassion to the troubled, grieving people who came to Him. He didn't recite pat doctrine to them -- He offered them real hope, through belief in Himself.
I've now heard back from them, and the offending statement is very likely going to be rewritten. Excellent. Yet I'm still deeply troubled by how widespread this type of insensitivity can be. Here is the statement Jesus made at the beginning of His ministry, publicly declaring His mission (Luke 14:18): "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed" I was about to type "earthly mission," but this mission is still ongoing. This very day, He is revealing His truth to the poor. This very day, He is releasing people from captivity. This very day, He is restoring sight to the blind. This very day, He is setting free the oppressed. I know, because I myself have been and in many ways still am the poor, the captive, the blind, the oppressed; and Christ is my Healer, my Liberator, my Saviour -- my only hope. I rarely rant here about the things that sometimes go on in Christ's worldwide church -- things which misrepresent Him, delight His enemy, and delay His kingdom. But who do we think we are when we speak to human beings as though they were doctrinal pegs on a board? Do we not belong to and answer to Jesus Christ, the Judge of all, the Releaser of captives? He alone is our Head. Have we been put in charge of separating the sheep from the goats? Certainly not, yet from what the church often conveys to the world, it would appear that we think we've been given this authority. And we go about it using earthly tools, such as politics and religious rhetoric. "Us vs. them" tactics. Are we not simply the lost who have been found? Our task as believers is to walk humbly with our God, to give the resurrected, living Christ free reign to live in and through us, thereby revealing to the world what He is like. Our job is to be ready at all times to walk where He wants to go, so that Christ Himself may continue to minister to the poor, the the captives, the blind, and the oppressed of the earth. Indeed, I myself am the pauper He came to seek out and save, the prisoner He came to set free. If I were not, He would have no interest in using my life. Unless we come before Him in continual acknowledgment of our own spiritual inadequacy, giving Him the right to call all the shots, He will not use our lives meaningfully. We may have a mission or a ministry, but it will not be His. End of rant. All glory to Jesus, the priceless Head of the ransomed church: Prisoners, no more worthy of ransom than anyone else. Spiritual paupers, who came to Him with nothing and have received everything. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
(2 Corinthians 4:7-10, English Standard Version) I've been having a rocky few months in many ways. When very little moved forward as it should have at the beginning of this week, it wasn't a huge surprise to me, but it was a huge annoyance to me. I stopped at one point and asked the Lord to speak to this frustration. The above verse is what He gave me. Bam, right to the point. But I just about fell off my chair when I read this: always carrying in the body the death of Jesus I know I've read this before, and heard it before, but all of a sudden it's jumping off the page. We, as believers, carry His death and His life in our own bodies. What does this mean for us? Bouncing rubber ball. I'm not being irreverent, I'm getting a picture of something. Before He died for us, when we fell, we fell -- period. But His death defeated death. We now carry both His saving death and His saving life within us. In His hands, anything intended to destroy us becomes an instrument of renewed life as we abide in Him. It bounces. Or another image: Immunity! I've been inoculated by His death. An inoculation gives us immunity to a disease by giving us the disease, but in a dosage that doesn't make us ill. Death and life in the same package. Saving death. Or this: Resurrection power. We carry His victorious resurrection life within us. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. ...And not to us. The surpassing power to defeat death is His and His alone. Don't look to a jar of clay to conquer anything. Look to the One whose power is so great, so profoundly transformative that it can raise the dead from the grave and lift the defeated to victory. As I've mentioned, I think of Psalm 116 as "mine" because of it holds special significance to me in my history with the Lord. Verses 6b and 7 are at the core of this; I've clung to them even when there's been no saving anywhere in sight:
I was brought low, and He saved me. Return to your rest, O my soul, For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. This past week I noticed something I'd never seen before, concerning verse 6: The Lord preserves the simple; I was brought low, and He saved me. There's a deep spiritual principle here, not just to do with being rescued from demoralizing life situations. To see this principle, it helps to read the whole verse in the present tense: The Lord preserves the simple; I am brought low, and He saves me. The Lord preserves and saves those who bow low in reverence before Him, who come to Him empty of their own agendas, surrendering everything at His feet. This isn't just a nice doctrinal truth to me, it's how life is beginning to play out now, as I look to Him in complete dependence and trust. He still allows me to go through difficult things, but He is always there for me in the middle of them, and lifts me onto His path in ways I had never thought possible before. He won't debate this with us or compete with us. All He asks is everything. But in return He invests His everything in our lives. |
Every truth of
Scripture leads to Christ. Charles Price .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
About me "Hephzibah" (Isaiah 62) A yet unfinished story of the Lord's perfect restoration work I live in southwestern Ontario, Canada. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| |||
2 Chronicles 7:16 בָּחַר קָדַשׁ ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| ||| [T]o our
wounds only God’s wounds can speak. from “Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito (1872-1948) Blog archives
August 2022
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...The eyes of the
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. 2 Chronicles 16:9a (KJ21) |