Jumping from a height

He’s teaching me to open my hand—to let my life go in joy for all the purposes He intends. It’s terrifying, and no way am I ready. It feels like the time I hung onto a rope and ran off a cliff into frigid river water fifty feet below. Not that I haven’t been here before. Other times He’s asked for a part of my life, some aspect He intended to mold and to use. Right now it’s my whole life, in every aspect. He’s brought pain, and He asks trust of me. I can’t say I’m doing the best job of this opening-my-hands thing.

The stakes are so high. Every time I forget how high, He reminds me. Life is no game. There are deadly forces stalking the people of God. Our flesh is strong to war against the Spirit within us. Trial presses hard, and I can’t handle this. The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak, and if I’m to grow, serve, bear fruit—if I’m to love, then I must be filled from Him who never runs dry.

I’m supposed to be a giver, a lover, the strengthener of arms. How in the world can I be strong enough to comfort others if I’m gasping for breath myself? How can I make others laugh if life is fading all around me?

The answers are taking a good long time to reach my heart from my head. There is One who holds me when I feel perpetually broken, One who restores what has been destroyed. Times of joy are up to Him, just as times of deep, dark water, times of wandering endlessly on mind trails and finding myself unsure of who I am and where I am for the first time in my life.

In heaven God’s will is done, and the Master teaches the child to ask that the will may be done on earth just as in heaven; in the spirit of adoring submission and ready obedience. Because the will of God is the glory of heaven, the doing of it is the blessedness of heaven. As the will is done, the kingdom of heaven comes into the heart.

 –Andrew Murray