Please don’t allow the enemy or the flesh to use the devotional I share today to beat you up with the club of condemnation. It is shared here today as a confession of sorts. This is my real life. When I began this blog, I promised the Lord to be real in sharing my journey. That is what this devotion is. A taste of the place where I am in the road today.

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In the same way, any of you who does not give up *everything*
he has cannot be my disciple
. (Emphasis added.)
– Luke 14:33

Before Jesus came to earth as “Baby Jesus,” He existed in perfect majesty, holiness, glory and unity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. He set all of it aside to take on flesh and to be born a human baby in the most modest of situations. The King of Glory left infinite glory and command of the universe to be a tiny helpless baby born in a cave amidst dirt and the stench of animal excrement.

As a man, he gave up his right to “be understood.” He was perfect, yet was mocked, beaten, abused, abandoned by everyone…including His friends. At the moment Jesus carried the sin of the world, even His Heavenly Father had to turn His back and reject His only Son. Jesus *did* give up everything. In Luke 14:33, Jesus doesn’t ask us to do something He wasn’t willing to experience.

As I was working through an Experiencing God bible study lesson years ago, I was faced with what was a very challenging issue. I now come back to it.

In one quick moment, my life seemed reduced to my response to a single solitary question in the middle of one single page in one single bible study book. My answer to the question could land in one of two little boxes. One box was for a YES response and one box was for a NO. I could check one…or…the other.

There was no third little box for “Maybe, sometimes.”
Or a little box I could mark for “Well, sure, I mean well, but I know I will fail…”
No “inbetween,” just a box for YES…
…and a box for…NO.

Do you wonder what the question was? Simply:

Have you come to a place in your life where
you are willing to yield “everything” to Him
in order to follow Him?

YES____
NO_____

How would you answer this?

It is challenging isn’t it?
All I claim about this great weight reduction “of mine”… is funneled down to this simple question tonight. My whole walk with God…There is a saying you may have heard before “If the Lord isn’t Lord of all, then He isn’t Lord at all.”

Years ago, God used the moment I faced those two boxes on the page to insist that I give everything to Him as He does even now.

My reaction now?

I earnestly begin my objections as I point to all the things I have given up!
“Look, Lord! I have stopped bingeing…stopped eating constantly…stopped inhaling these foods mindlessly, living at that drive through…isn’t that wonderful? Gosh, I am even eating GRILLED chicken now, instead of FRIED–what is ‘beneficial’ and all! Isn’t my body PROOF of all I have done to honor you?”

Do you hear the arrogance? :-/

Do you hear the pride? :-/

In my quiet time today…each time I tried to pray, I heard the still, small, but insistent, voice of the Spirit saying, “This….this….I want you to surrender…this…”

You see, there is something that I refuse to lay down and give to him. And it stands in the way. Right now, if I have to pick one box or the other…. “Yes” … or “No”…

…my answer to the question above is…
…NO… 🙁

Good grief! After all He has done and is doing for me, how can this be? How can all I value be reduced to my “NO” answer to the question of “Are you willing, Heidi, to yield everything to me?”

“BUT …GOD!!!”

Over the years of my life since I became a Christian, I have given up all kinds of things. In fact, I have given up…well…*almost* everything….sigh.

I know the truth…The *almost* isn’t enough. He wants it ALL.

Lord, thank you that you make it very simple for me to see that as puffed up as I have become lately with all the ways in which I have been obeying you, I still resist you. Lord, I want to be your disciple and you say I must give EVERYTHING up. You gave up more than I could ever fathom to redeem me. You have bought me at an incredible price. I will trust you to work this out in my life. I want to say YES to you. I am willing to be made willing. Please do this work in me. I want to be willing to lay everything down to follow you. In the Name of Jesus my Savior, who gave up all things…Amen.

2007 © Heidi Bylsma