1295. The Joy of Yielding

The Joy of Yielding

Within Christianity we talk about people making a decision for Christ. We become children of God by receiving Him (John 1:12), and it seems like receiving Him requires a decision to do so. But what is He really asking us to do? The more we read the gospels, the clearer the answer becomes. The answer lies in His pleas for us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. 

For most of us, we made a decision to receive Him as our Savior. We thought we were also receiving Him as Lord, but we weren’t told about the yielding part. That came later, after we had spent way too many frustrating years trying to bring Christ into our world. Time after time, we would find ourselves asking Christ to help us to accomplish something, overcome something, or to understand something.

Every time we ask Christ to help us, we are denying the reality He came to bring. We are saying that nothing really happened to us when we made our decision for Him. We’re declaring that we’re still here, and that the only change in our lives is that now we have Christ to help us do the things God requires of us. We convince ourselves that we’re on the right track, but in our moments of honest reflection, we’re frustrated, worn out, and disillusioned. Yet, we must not let anyone know. We must keep up appearances.

Sound familiar? Of course, it does. This is what the Americanized version of Christianity has become, and it all started with our failure to yield to Him immediately. We’re slow learners, and we need to learn for ourselves, usually the hard way. Then, when we come to the end of our striving and working, we take seriously His command to yield everything to Him. We finally start to consider what it means to consecrate ourselves, to be given over completely to the use of our Master. When we do, we take our first steps into the Kingdom of God.

For the first time in our lives, we yield to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We quickly discover that everything that mattered in our former world has become insignificant. Everything seems to have been turned upside down. Here the poor in spirit and those who mourn are the blessed ones. Here the meek are those who will inherit the earth.

In the world we left behind, the rich and powerful gained the most. Those with the most to offer got rewarded. They were recognized for their achievements. We all became more to get what we wanted from life. Yet, in the end, we never found the “life” we desired. As Christians, we indulged in morbid introspection, constantly analyzing how we were doing and why we failed so often. We were “conscious” of everything-how we were doing, if we were being used by God, if we were advancing in our Christian walk.

For us to take those first steps into the Kingdom of God, our Heavenly Father had to convince us that we had absolutely nothing to offer. We had to see how unclean we really were. This, and only this, brought us to true repentance. We had seen the real us which led to a sense of unutterable unworthiness. Yes, we had come to see that “we” (all that we are apart from God) were helpless and hopeless. But above all else, we were overcome by a sense of unworthiness.

Now, we are prepared and willing to yield everything. Finally, we discover that we have entered into the Kingdom of God. Instantly, we are becoming oblivious to all our former concerns. 

In the Kingdom of God, we willingly become like beggars because we have become convinced that we’re nothing apart from Christ (John 15:5). But since Christ is now our life, we rest in the assurance that the one who created the universe and has been given all authority in heaven and in earth, now resides within God’s true children. No more striving. No more morbid introspection. No more consciousness of whether we are being used by God. Our oneness with Christ is our only consciousness. We have finally entered into the Kingdom of God and into the joy of yielding.

Census Taker: “How many children do you have?”

Woman: “Four.”

Census Taker: “May I have their names, please?”

Woman: “Eenee, Meenee, Minee and George.”

Census Taker: “Okay, that’s fine. But may I ask why you named your fourth child George?”

Woman: “Because we didn’t want any Moe.”