Jude 1:21

I’m not loved because I’m somebody,

I’m somebody because I’m loved.

B.M.S.

John 6:37b

The measure of our yielding is the measure of our human life. It includes everything inside: spirit, mind, heart, will, affections. It includes everything outside: home, children, possessions, occupation. It includes everything  allied: friendships, time, money, pleasures, life plans.

It includes our past, present and future. No matter what the past has held of sin, sorrow or self, it is all handed over to Christ in a once-and-for-all committal. But some can surrender the past who find it difficult to yield the present to Christ’s control. There is the desire to reserve a bit of ground. Others can surrender the past and present because driven to it by disheartenment or desperation but they are fearful to put the future wholly into His keeping. How do they know that God can be trusted to be faithful or that they desire to live under His absolute sway for all times?

When giving a message on the yielded life at a conference I noticed the anxious, troubled face of a woman on the front seat. I said, “You are able to trust July to God but fearful to put September into His keeping.” Her face lighted up with a smile which was in truth an acknowledgement of being caught in the very act of worry.

After the meeting, she said, “That remark about committing September to the Lord hit me. I could be very happy here, now; but I  must have an operation in September and I have only half enjoyed this beautiful place because I am worrying over September!”

Yielding includes our worst and our best. Some find it very difficult to believe that God can accept or want them because there is so much “the worst” that persists in their lives. But “Him that comes to me I will in no way cast out” is an invitation extended to the sinning saint as truly as to the sinner.

Grace abounds from the beginning clear through to the end of our lives. So no matter how often we have repeated the same sin, if we come yielding ourselves unconditionally to Him, He waits to receive us, and the blood of Jesus Christ is equal to any demand made upon it for cleansing.

Ruth Paxson

2 Corinthians 4:7

It is cause for great gratitude to God that no human weakness need limit the divine power. We are apt to think that where sadness exists, there joy cannot exist; that where there are tears, there cannot be praise; that where weakness is present, power must be absent; that where there is doubt, there cannot be faith. But let me proclaim this with a clear voice, that God is seeking to bring us to the point where we recognize that all that is of man is only intended to provide an earthen vessel to contain the divine treasure. Henceforth when we are conscious of depression, let us not give way to depression, but to the Lord; and the treasure will shine forth all the more gloriously because of the earthen vessel. Herein lies the glory of Christianity, that God’s treasure can be manifest in every earthen vessel. Christianity is a paradox, and it is as we Christians live in this paradoxical life that we get to know God. The further we go on in the Christian life, the more paradoxical it becomes. The treasure becomes increasingly manifest, but the earthen vessel is the earthen vessel still.

People who are naturally weak are always apt to think they are no good because of the earthen quality of the vessel; but there is no need for dejection since the treasure within the vessel is of such a quality as to shine forth with added splendor from within such a vessel.

Brothers and Sisters, let me say once again that the whole question is one of the quality of the treasure, not the quality of the vessel that contains it. It is folly to stress the negative aspect; our concern is with the positive. The Lord is able to manifest Himself in the life of every one of us, and when that comes to past many will behold the treasure.

Watchman Nee

Matthew 19:13-14

There are no people so hard to teach as those who imagine they are more advanced than they are.

J.B. Stoney

Ephesians 1:11

We are constantly ensnared by looking at secondary causes – we do not realize God in everything. Were we more alive to the fact that there is not an event which happens to us, from morning to night, in which the voice of our Father may not be heard, His hand seen, with what a blessed atmosphere would it surround us! Man and circumstances would then be received as so many agents and instruments in our Father’s hand; so many ingredients in His cup for us. Thus would our minds be solemnized, our spirits calmed, our hearts subdued.

C.A. Coates

John 6:44

Do we not often harbor the thought that something yet remains to be done – either by ourselves or by Him – in order for us to draw near?

Do we not often thus become occupied with the circumstancials of worship rather than with the Lord Jesus – the substance?

Are we not often false to Him in questioning our right to draw near because we find distance in our own hearts, as if it was the warmth of our affections, instead of the blood of the Lord Jesus, which brings us near?

William Kelly

1 John 2:15-17

“While sitting on the bank of a river one day, I picked up a solid round stone from the water and broke it open. It was perfectly dry in spite of the fact that it had been immersed in water for centuries. The same is true of many people in the Western world. For centuries they have been surrounded by Christianity; they live immersed in the waters of its benefits. And yet it has not penetrated their hearts; they do not love it. The fault is not in Christianity, but in men’s hearts, which have been hardened by materialism and intellectualism.”

Sadhu Sundar Singh

John 15:7

In creation God acts sovereignty and alone. But in the unfolding of His redemptive purposes, He wills it otherwise. He chooses to unite with Himself human instruments and share with them the excitement of creativity. The incarnation was part of the working out of this plan.

In sending His Son to become man, God revealed in a new way His purpose to limit Himself to working in and through a relationship with man. The vital, indispensable part of this working relationship is prayer. God communicated His will to the Son in the intensive exercise of prayer that occupied so many of our Lord’s nights in desert places.

Then on earth, working according to His Father’s will, the Human Instrument acted in the performance of signs and wonders, counting on the power He had requested in prayer because His will was one with the Father’s.

This brings us to the basic divine principle in prayer – that God unites His people with Himself in whatever He wants to do, first leading them to pray and then giving the thing for which He burdened them to pray. God’s will is to send rain on Ahab’s drought-stricken land. He will not act alone. He unites Elijah with Him in His purposes by communicating to him His intention; then when Elijah prays, God acts. Elijah could bring a drought on Israel in the first place, not just because he prayed the rain out of the sky, but because he could first say, “As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand.” He was not initiating some self-conceived idea, but was acting with God for the performance of God’s will . . . for just such a situation as prevailed in his days.

The same principle is taught by the Lord Jesus in His Upper Room discourse under the symbolism of the vine and the branches. Abiding in Him is the condition He established for our asking and His acting. What had been set up as the working arrangement between Himself and His Father is perpetuated in the New Covenant-based relationship between Himself and His Church. It was to be standard operating procedure.

Arthur Matthews

Jeremiah 32:27

Could it be possible that God would so  love an individual as to give His only Son to die for him and still love him to the extent of following him with pleadings and drawings of His grace until He has won that soul into His own family and created him anew by the impartation of His own divine nature, and then be careless as to what becomes of the one He has thus given His all to procure?

Lewis Sperry Chafer

Psalm 37:23

To penetrate deeper in the experience of Jesus Christ, it is required that you begin to abandon your whole existence, giving it up to God. Let us take the daily occurrences of life as an illustration. You must utterly believe that the circumstances of your life, that is, every minute of your life, as well as the whole course of your life – anything, yes, everything that happens – have all come to you by His will and by His permission. You must utterly believe that everything that has happened to you is from God and is exactly what you  need.

Such an outlook towards your circumstances and such a look of faith towards your Lord will make you content with everything that comes into your life as being from the hand of God, not from the hand of man.

Jeanne Guyon