God, you are everywhere. You see all of me. Every part. There is nothing that I can hide from you, and I repent for ever trying. I repent for holding things in myself back from you. Part of me seems certain that you are a big, angry monster with a huge stick, just waiting to beat me with it once I’ve screwed up badly enough. The Spirit testifies with my spirit that this is not the case, and tells me that’s not who you are, but it still seems so real, the parts of me that have those ideas impressed upon them, programmed into them. I bring you all of these confusions and complications, and I choose to focus on the real you, no matter what my feelings try to tell me.
There is a whole different dimension where this focusing happens. It’s like I’m looking at you with a different set of eyes or something. Maybe it’s my spirit’s eyes. I don’t know. All I know for sure is that I can choose to simply ask myself at any given moment, “What would the Christ in me do in response to this pain, in response to this fear? How does the Christ in me want me to choose my thoughts and actions in this particular case?”
I remember before I knew you. I had a conscience, sure, just like everyone else, and there was a deep down piece of me that “knew better” with regards to a thousand different things. But once I asked you to come into my life and to save me…once I reached out to you, Jesus, and gave myself to you, I was suddenly awake in a way that was so deep that I didn’t even have the ability to be aware of it, mostly. My flesh was still who I thought I was, and the voice of the Spirit was a completely new thing.
I began to be certain that you wanted me to change things about the way I was living, and I knew that this would require a lot of me, but somehow I wasn’t worried about it. I felt you assuring me that you would take care of it all, if only I stayed on track and followed your voice. Still, though, there was this altogether lighthearted assurance…
When you did begin to lead me into those places of change, I fought it tooth and nail at first. Every demon that had ever been attached to my life wrestled and screamed with all its might, and strove to pry me out of your hand. I did my best to go along with all that, too, but you reached right down and spoke to me so clearly. You told me in no uncertain terms what I needed to do, and where you wanted me to go.
It’s been a long time since then, and it is embarrassing to me how closely the more recent parts of my journey with you have resembled these initial sputterings. I am so thankful that you’ve not let me go, that you have not left me or forsaken me, even though I’ve been anything but faithful to you. I don’t want to delay any more. I don’t want to hold anything back any more. I press into you now with an expectation and a hope for all things to be made new, for my spirit to come into its correct place of complete headship over each and every part of my life.
I come to you here and now, just as I am, and I render full and complete obedience to you in that I accept your love and forgiveness as being complete, your atonement to be perfect, and that your acceptance of me has been final since that place in eternity where I died in Christ and rose again.
