Just hold on loosely

I was thinking while walking this morning, "Why proceed like I think I'm going to be here for any extended length of time?" Just yesterday in the kitchen, I mentioned something regarding summer grilling to my 82-year-old mom and she said, "Maybe we'll try that, if I'm still here." She doesn't even have a single health problem outside of seasonal allergies and a few vericose veins.

In November it will be a year since we got the shocking news that my 55-year-old brother-in-law had a brain aneurism on his job and was only being kept "alive" in time for his organs to be donated. His wife, my only sister, died just as shockingly in 2012 when her heart stopped from an undetected infection. She was only 48. We found out that my brother-in-law had been weighed down with financial fears, including worry about how he would replace his aging truck that had an expensive mechanical problem.

One of the most frequently sung hymns at my church, “Higher Ground,” goes:

“My heart has no desire to stay Where doubts arise and fears dismay; Though some may dwell where these abound, My prayer, my aim, is higher ground.

"The Apostle Paul had this concept of holding on loosely to earth," says Jordan. "When he says, ‘Neither count I my life dear to myself,’ he didn’t say he didn’t love his family, or that he was trying to die tomorrow. He said, ‘I’m holding it loose. The most precious things to me are not what I possess here.’

*****

"That Spirit of adoption is God the Holy Spirit. You've received right now the Spirit that's going to resurrect you out there in the future. 

"The Lord Jesus Christ, in the garden of Gethsemane facing Calvary, falls on the ground and prays, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.' When He does that He says, 'Abba, Father. I trust you above all other. I know you have my interest only on your heart.'

“Paul says in Galatians, 'And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.' When you cry, you’ve reached down into the depths of the reality of who you are and all the other stuff is taken away. A cry is something that reaches down into the depths of your soul with the reality of the moment and that personal affection.

"You and I have that ability because we know the security of our future to trust Him now as though we were already there. Romans 8:16-17: [16] The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
[17] And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

*****

"Our life is not formulas where, 'If I do this and this, I'm successful.' It's really about living out of the identity you already have in Christ, and, 'Because of who I am in Christ, this is the way I'm going to conduct my life. This is the way grace is going to teach me to think.'

"You ask yourself the question, 'How can I give God what He wants most? What does He want the most out of me? 'I beseech you that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.'

"That's a personal choice; a personal course of action. I'm going to say, 'Lord, I want to honor you with my body. I'm yours; I know who I am in my liberty. Now I want to take my body, my life in all its details . . .'

" 'With my hands, my feet, my brains, I'm going to honor the Lord.' As Paul writes in Romans 6:13, 'But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.'

"That's the idea of surrendering. There was a popular reality show involving some kind of card game where the guy, to win the pot at the end, would push in his pile of chips and say, 'I'm all in.'  That means, 'I risk it all, commit it all.' That's what this is. In your Christian life, the Lord says it all starts when you go 'all in' and say, 'I'm going to honor the Lord with my body.'

*****

"Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, [20] I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

"You have to keep having those 'Not I' moments so that you'll back up and say, 'Well, it's Christ.' If you're walking, you make progress: 'Not I, aghhh, it's got to be Christ. Okay, now I can take another step,' and then you go another step. That's how you grow; you learn more and more that it's not you. The moment you think you've arrived, that's the 'Not I' moment.

"This lesson is the heart, the soul of the Christian life. It's not just that I'm going to die and go to heaven because my sins are forgiven. I have a fellowship with the Creator of heaven and earth through His Son. I have access unto the Father. The whole of the godhead I fellowship with.

"That's why you're transformed by the renewing of your mind. It's an internal thinking process. You replace the old human viewpoint with divine viewpoint and that Holy Spirit takes that doctrine, that divine viewpoint, and energizes."