MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS
“Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” Rom.6:13
Throughout most of my life as a Christian I have had plenty of opportunities to walk in offense. I’ve also seen a lot of Christians lose their way when they refuse to let go of their offenses. It’s easy to tell when we are all offended, for our minds are consumed with an ongoing argument of “our rights and their wrongs”. It can be downright exhausting. No matter how right we think we are; we end up being very wrong. We need to drink of the river of the love of God. Losing another day to anger is just not worth it.
McLaren says; “Yielding yourselves to God is the talismanic secret of all righteousness. I hallow my heart if its love twines round His heart. I hallow my thoughts if I take His truth for my guide, and ever seek to be led thereby in practice and in belief. I hallow my will when it bows and says, ‘Speak, Lord! Thy servant heareth!’ I hallow my senses when I use them as from Him, with recognition of Him and for Him. In fact, there are two ways of living in the world; and, narrow as it sounds, I venture to say there are only two. Either God is my centre, and that is holiness; or self is my centre, in more or less subtle forms, and that is sin.”
Christ comes to us to take over. Period. It matters not what your neighbor, boss, best friend or spouse just did, said or didn’t do. People are fallible and will be fallible all of their lives and we remain fallible ourselves. It’s in these situations we grow when we learn to yield.
McLaren again says, “My yielding of myself to Him can only be the echo of His giving of Himself to me. He must be the first to love. You cannot argue a man into loving God, any more than you can hammer a rosebud open. If you do you spoil its petals. But He can love us into loving Him, and the sunshine, falling on the closed flower, will expand it, and it will grow by its reception of the light, and grow sunlike in its measure and according to its nature.”
So where do you find yourself this Monday morning? Let it all go in the name of Jesus! Whatever happened it just isn’t worth the hassle. Allow the Son-shine to fall on the closed up flower (you!) and you just might come out “smelling like a rose”! Praise Him!