Mark 10:28
“Then Peter began to say unto Him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee. . . ”
What of Today’s Verse…
Our Lord replies in effect, that abandonment is for Himself, and not for what the disciples themselves will get from it. Beware of an abandonment, which has the commercial spirit in it – “I am going to give myself to God because I want to be delivered from sin, because I want to be made holy.” Not all that is the result of being right with God, but that spirit is of the essential nature of Christianity. Abandonment is not for anything at all. We have become so commercialized that we only go to God for something from Him, and not for Himself. It is like saying, “No, Lord, I don’t want Thee, I want myself; but I want myself clean and filled with the Holy Ghost; I want to be put in Thy show room and be able to say – ‘This is what God has done for me.'” If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest. That we gain heaven that we are delivered from sin that we are made useful to God – these things never enter as considerations into real abandonment, which is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.
When we come up against the barriers of natural relationship, where is Jesus Christ? Most of us desert Him – “Yes, Lord, I did hear Thy call; but my mother is in the road, my wife, my self-interest, and I can go no further.” “Then,” Jesus says, “You cannot be My disciple.”
The test of abandonment is always over the neck of natural devotion. Go over it, and God’s own abandonment will embrace all those you had to hurt in abandoning. Beware of stopping short of abandonment to God. Most of us know abandonment in vision only.
Words of Wisdom
Beyond yourself…
How far beyond yourself, are you willing to think and act? Have you ever done anything that will benefit the world not today, not next year, but a thousand years from now?
If you limit your awareness to only your own concerns, you will continually be frustrated and disappointed. That is because your true nature exists far beyond the superficial, petty concerns of your shallow and fragile ego.
Imagine being able to live without fear, in a constant state of pure peacefulness and effortless fulfillment. You can inhabit that terrain when you let go of the concerns of self.
When you erect impenetrable borders between you and everything else, you push life’s immense abundance away from your experience. The walls of exclusion and judgment that you create do quickly become your prison.
Your awareness does not have to be limited by your perceptions. Beyond the confines of time and distance, there is no end to the fulfillment that can be known.
What you can achieve alone is quite impressive. Yet what you create by going beyond yourself can indeed fulfill every dream.
