Abandonment

[Chad]

Abandonment
Oswald Chambers

“Then Peter began to say unto Him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee… .”
Mark 10:28

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." All that is the result of being right with God, but that spirit is not of the essential nature of Christianity.

Abandonment is not for anything at all. We have got 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.

 

[jiggyfly]

Thanks for posting this Chad, it reminds me of something Jesus said to a rich fellow once, " your lacking one thing, go sell all you have and give it to the poor, then come take up your cross and follow me."

Jesus said in Matthew 10 that inorder to be His disciple we must take up our cross and follow Him, we will find that to truely walk with Jesus the cross is unavoidable and we find that abandoning self (denying self) is not optional but rather a strict requirement.

 

[Coconut]

...A personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.

Christ the hidden treasure...He so completely and absolutely gave Himself to us...why should we not prefer Him above everyone and everything?


Mat 13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field that a man found and hid. In his joy he went and sold everything he had and bought that field."

Everything.

The definition of abandon, according to Webster’s, is:
1: to give up to the control or influence of another person or agent
b :to give up with the intent of never again claiming a right or interest in