"It isn't a sacrifice unless we have something to put upon the altar."
I surprised myself when these words came out yesterday. I thought about the simple weight of what I'd just said...how often do I give flesh to those words? How often do I really place my desires there on the altar?
Too often, I find myself holding on to them. One cannot paradoxically give life to dreams by holding them with a death-grip. And death-grips are tiring. But when what is held tightly is released to God, rest and freedom can enter.
Whether our desires are little things like a simple hour to read in peace, or big things like traveling the world, good things like marriage and children, or things that can never be...a different ending to a tiny mound of brown dirt...in the end, all can eat away the soul if they consume us. If we seek redemption in anything but Christ, all we get are dreams that quickly turn to nightmares.
As we place our desires there upon the altar, we have room for His desires to enter.
The only freedom from bitterness and anxiety and futile manipulation is in the Dream-That-Has-Come-True. The only thing that can nourish our souls when we are consumed by it is the love of God in Christ. I must find contentment and fulfillment not in some plan or dream, but in Him alone, where He has me now, in this hour, in this fixed longitude and latitude, or it will forever elude me.
As Francios Fénelon wrote to a young lady hundreds of years ago:
You must return to Him. You will have no peace except through this surrender. Let go all your plans; God will do as He pleases with them. Even if they should succeed through earthly means, God would not bless them; but if you wholly offer them up to God as a sacrifice, He will turn everything to His own merciful purposes, whether He does what you have desired, or whether He never does it.
It can hurt to give them up. Plans, desires, dreams. It is death when they are ripped away. And unless the seed falls to the earth and dies...it is dead already. But when it dies, when we die to it, fruit can grow from the brown dirt.
Plans, dreams, desires, all are in much better care out of our hands and in our Heavenly Father's hands anyway.
"There is heaven in the depth of that word—Father! There is all I can ask; all my necessities can demand; all my wishes can desire. I have all in all to all eternity when I can say, "Father." - Charles Spurgeon
He promises that He is good, and works all things for our good. And the more we give up ourselves, stop holding so tightly to ourselves and more tightly to our Heavenly Father, the less it hurts and the more we realize...we have HIM. Hold all with "as the Lord wills."
I wonder if sometimes I don't have it backwards. What if Psalms 37:4 means not exclusively that we will get what our hearts desire, but that we would receive the desires of our hearts? Meaning, as we delight in God and all He has carefully chosen for us (for His glory), that our Father would place His desires for us in our hearts. What if He replaced our passing fancies (even consuming desires) with the ultimate Desire, the Desire of nations...more of God Himself? And desires that He give always have a fulfillment. We must simply find Him that fills all in all our all in all.
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! - Matt. 7:11
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. - James 1:17
But what if all we had was God? Wouldn't we have everything in Him?
"When in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things."
- George MacDonald.
Jesus put Himself upon the altar. He opened His hands, let go of what He could have had, and received driven nails through them so we could open our hands, escape what we deserve, and receive Him. He died and fell under the brown dirt...and lived again more gloriously than ever.
Opening your hands and releasing what you never really held in the first place is the only way to truly see all you already hold. If all is His, and He is ours, what more do we desire? And in that open position, those hands are ready to give and serve, bless and receive blessing...as the Lord wills.
All to Jesus I surrender,
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
Let me feel Thy Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.
ak
