Give Up Everything

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes,

Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender.1

Chambers’s words challenge us to consider the seeming madness of Jesus’ proclamation in the Gospel of Luke:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. . . . Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.2

To everyone else in the world, Jesus Christ’s proclamation that we must hate our parents, siblings, spouse, children, and ourselves in order to follow Him may seem mad, but to every Christian, these words are life.

Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him. . . . If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says.3

For the few who choose to abandon themselves to the will of God and put their trust in His character, following Jesus wherever He leads—no matter the cost—is the only thing that makes sense.

Confess your need for God’s wisdom and ask Him to give you the grace to entrust your entire life to Him.

1. Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry for May 30, https://utmost.org/yes%E2%80%94-​­but.

2. Luke 14:26-27, 33

3. Chambers, My Utmost, May 30.