“Therefore let those… entrust their souls to a faithful Creator…” (1 Peter 4:19, ESV).
“I entrust my spirit into your hand. Rescue me, Lord, for you are a faithful God” (Ps. 31:5, NLT).
Can I be real with you? I want to share something personal that I believe will help you on your own journey into ever-increasing freedom. This morning, I was asking God to take me deeper into the realm of humility. This request was the prayer that rose up in me, in response to His conviction about an area where I still need to grow. He was showing me the propensity in me to seek glory for myself.
There was something new about this prayer, though. It was different from previous occasions when I asked Him to clean my heart of any self-glorifying tendencies. This time, a new faith rose up within me. I knew in my spirit that I was entrusting my soul to Him in that moment. At a very profound level of my being, I was giving over to Him, in absolute trust, the job of sanctifying me. There was such joy in being empowered to release this responsibility to Him!
Do you see the subtle difference? In the past, when I would become aware of the tendency towards pride innate in my sinful nature, I would feel the weight of it. I would pray about it, sincerely desiring to grow more into the image of Jesus. However, the prayer still had a vague sense of burden surrounding it. This time, however, I experienced the prayer in a burden-free way.
He empowered me to fully entrust my soul to Him. He reassured my heart that He has firmly committed to sanctify me through and through. You and I both – we need our souls (mind, will, and emotions) to be transformed more and more and more. We need to be made more like our Savior. This is Holy Spirit’s job. He has promised to do this job unswervingly. The more we take Him at His word, the more we will rest in this assurance. He who began the good work in us will be faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus!
Holy Spirit is fiercely, passionately committed to His role of sanctifying you and me. When we pray about our perceived weaknesses, He wants to impart this strong confidence to our spirits. We can fully entrust our souls to our faithful Creator. Just as He created us, just as He began the breathtaking work of reproducing the beauty of Jesus in our lives, He will unfailingly finish the job.
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it” (1 Thess. 5:23-24, NIV).
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How do we “work out our salvation with fear and trembling,” at the same time relying completely on God to do His sanctifying work in us? How do we engage with Him in this process?
Feeding On Jesus 
Jennifer, I am reflecting on the impact in my heart and spirit, that Oswald Chambers and the Blackaby’s had in my years of reading their books. Abandonment was a central theme in many of their writing. I thought I knew what this meant at that time. But since then and until this day, Spirit of God has unfolded the true purpose of letting go of everything I hold near and dear. I think in this moment of a wound on my body which I apply to keep out bad things. Then the Lord says, remove this covering and expose all to Me, that I may make it clean and heal that which must me make whole. Amen Len Wisniewski
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That is a wonderful way to understand it! I actually use that same illustration in a lot of my teachings here. I teach a class about healing soul wounds through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that principle really is the best way to illustrate what He does on the inside of us. So much of the physical world points to the spiritual world!
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I believe a good example of what you’re getting at can be found within the writing process that you, I and others contend with. If you or I create a really good post for our sites and receive praise for it, a key moment is reached. Of course we like praise, but if our reaction to the compliments is based in selfishness, we want more and more praise. It becomes an addiction, and we realize the only way to get more praise is another blog post, so we hurry to get something published that isn’t as well done as it could have been. It doesn’t get the reaction we hoped, and we become frustrated.
If we accept the praise and give God the glory, we wind up in a more relaxed frame of mind, and are able to do the next post in a much sharper fashion. It’s all about learning to let the Divine Editor work through us, and realizing that our writing is much better and meaningful when we do allow it!
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That’s a perfect example, Mike 🙂 Truly, having this blog has been one of God’s main tools over the last year and a half to continue to develop His humility in me. I know He still has more to do, but I also rejoice because I can see all the progress the Divine Editor has already made! He is so good at all His jobs!! 😀
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I loved this post.
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I’m so very glad! Thank you!! 🙂
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You are so welcome
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😀
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😀👍
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Great post. I am learning to have a heart for God. It does require humility.
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Thank you so much! And amen, yes it does. I am so glad you are pursuing more of His heart! How wonderful! 🙂
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Because I write this constant need to ensure that my life is ‘surrendered’ and ‘abandoned’ to Him is ‘ongoing’. There is such pressure in our world scene to be ‘Noticed and known’. My heart is that He will be known and because of what He has done and continues to do in my life I desire to be ‘invisible’ but as a writer this is often not possible. I have asked that as I Thank Him for the Gift it will always be used for His Glory. It is an ongoing prayerful journey. Personal satisfaction must be geared to HIM.
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I very much relate to your journey, Faye! So similar to my own prayers. As John the Baptist, may He increase, and may I decrease!
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