Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
What is it that keeps many Christians from being, in contemporary Evangelical parlance, \u201csold out\u201d to Jesus Christ? Why do believers hold back so much of their lives from consecration to Him? The answer may lie in the thoughts we entertain about who God is. Trusting another for anything truly important is usually difficult for human beings. As adults we do not naturally trust anyone anymore; it always involves some degree of effort. The loss of childlike faith in others comes not only through the betrayals we endure but also through the betrayals we ourselves commit. Our wariness would not exist if we were not still on this side of Heaven. Until the day we arrive safely home there we will continue to be redeemed sinners living among other sinners (redeemed or not.)The tendency is to look at an unsafe world inhabited by unsafe people and infer that no one can possibly be what we need them to be. Unfortunately this inference often gets extended to include God.<\/p>\n
Human beings are relational creatures. In fact we are all dependent on relationships for our very lives for apart from them we die in every sense. On a horizontal level this\u00a0healthy dependency is mutual and \u00a0is expressed through our vital connections with other people. But the more vital connection is vertical, between man and his Creator. It is this relationship that ultimately demands everything of us and such an all-encompassing bond is impossible apart from deep trust in God. When that trust isn\u2019t there we hold back from giving ourselves fully to Him.<\/p>\n
How, then, are Christians to find the courage needed to lose themselves in order to fully gain Christ? The hope we need comes from the prospect of progressively coming to know who He truly is and who He truly is to us. As we seek, however imperfectly, after the knowledge of God He gives us grace to see the reality that He is incapable of the kind of betrayal we experience from our fellows. Betrayal is purely a product of sin. It happens because we are imperfect beings who cannot be perfectly faithful to each other no matter how hard we try. But the Lover of our souls is perfect. Within the Trinity God exists in flawless and eternal communion between Father, Son and Spirit. The bond He purposes to forge with the sons of men is, in some sense, an external manifestation of that internal relational perfection. Such perfection does not have a place for betrayal. We may betray Him, but he will never betray us.<\/p>\n
The pulpit in a church I once attended had a small sign declaring the truth that \u201cJesus never fails\u201d. In God\u2019s relationship with us there is no prospect of failure on His end<\/em>. In coming to know the absolute reality of this statement something will begin to happen in us. We will find that we are able to progressively give all that we are to God because we have seen that He, in the Person of His Son, has already given all that He is to us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved What is it that keeps many Christians from being, in contemporary Evangelical parlance, \u201csold out\u201d to Jesus Christ? Why do believers hold back so much of their lives from consecration to Him? The answer may lie in the thoughts we entertain about who God is. Trusting another for… <\/p>\n