In reading Passion and Purity this morning, this part really stuck out to me seeing how it is so applicable to my life at the moment. The chapter this excerpt is from is called "Does God Want Everything?" The author, Elisabeth Elliot, begins the chapter talking about God "sifting men's hearts" in both the Old and New Testament, testing to see if they were totally committed to their God. (For those of you reading this blog and do not know anything about this book, it is the story of the 5 year courtship of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot and the lessons she learned in waiting on God's perfect timing and finding true joy in the Lord.) Elliot says:
"In Lilias Trotter's beautifully illustrated book, Parables of the Cross , she describes the death-life cycle of plants, which illustrates the spiritual processes that must go on in us if we are to die to self and live to God. In the love life, as well as in other areas:
'The fair new petals must fall, and for no visible reason. No one seems enriched by the stripping.
And the first step into the realm of giving is a like surrender--not manward but Godward: an utter yielding of our best. So long as our idea of surrender is limited to renouncing of unlawful things, we have never grasped its true meaning: that is not worthy of the name for "no polluted thing" can be offered.
The life lost on the Cross was not a sinful one--the treasure poured forth there was God-given, God-blessed treasure, lawful and right to be kept: only that there was the life of the world at stake.'
What kind of a God is it who asks everything of us? The same God who '...did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?'
He gives all.
He asks all.
I wanted to be loved. Nothing unusual about that, nothing to separate my generation from any other.
But I wanted something deeper. Down among all the foolishness in my diary, thoughts like chaff which the wind of the Spirit can drive away, there was some wheat. There was an honest-to-God longing for the 'fixed heart.' [...] But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives, is What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands [...] and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?
Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone to accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart's truth. My heart, I know, would be forever a lonely hunter unless settled 'where true joys are to be found.'
One morning I was reading the story of Jesus' feeding of the five thousand. The disciples could find only five loaves of bread and two fishes. 'Let me have them,' said Jesus. He asked for all. He took them, said the blessing, and broke them before He gave them out. I remembered what a chapel speaker, Ruth Stull of Peru, had said: 'If my life is broken when given to Jesus, it is because pieces will feed a multitude, while a loaf will satisfy only a little lad." (End of quote)
I know this excerpt was really long, but it totally addressed some things I was thinking about last night. I loved the illustration of the petals falling off the flower. There are times when I know I need to give God wants and desires but it does not make sense to do so. We see time and time again each spring the blossoming of fruit trees; the flowers are beautiful and it seems sad when they fall off. But we know, from past experience, that a more precious thing is coming...the actual fruit! As believers, we see testimony to God's requiring sacrifice and the blessings He gives for obedience in the lives of His children. Abraham obeyed God and took Isaac to be sacrificed; but God saved Issac because of Abraham's obedience and blessed him beyond anything he imagined. I may not know why God requires me to sacrifice certain things, but I can be confident in knowing that He will bring that sacrifice to fruition if not in this life on earth but in the life to come.
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