Trusting Enough
If I say that I trust God enough to let Him do the work in me, then the challenge is to trust Him enough to not try to do it in a way that acts as though Christ is not present within me. This is a vigilant posture; everything in the flesh or ego wants to tackle the job from an independent stance – self wants credit for the changes that occur. Religious jargon provokes vain attempts to try to conquer my own foe. The flesh lusts for the power and glory that belong to God.
A question I ask myself is whether or not I will receive God’s love despite the weaknesses of the flesh. Can I remain in peace and rest in the face of frailty? If nothing can separate me from His love then doesn’t that include the offensiveness of the flesh? Will I love others and myself with His love and resist the demand that we first fix our flesh or ego?
The flesh is an attention-seeker with an endless campaign to enlist self-effort. It wants to earn love by seeming victorious. It is silenced as I recall that it is God (quietly at work in me) who treads down my enemy. It is the pride of the flesh that the Lord despises…not my weaknesses. Can I remain still even when it seems like God isn’t on the job? Can I trust Him even if it seems He is neglecting His promise? Can I love myself even when it seems like flesh is winning and making a mockery out of my trust?
To trust Him is also to accept my feelings of nakedness…allowing His Spirit to clothe me while Christ is growing up in me. Christ in me is my only hope of glory. He was the model of new creation living. His union with the Father was a revelation of God’s original blueprint. God always intended to inhabit humanity – to flow through us in seamless unity just as He did in Christ. Jesus gave substance and tangibility to God’s plan when He took sin and separation with Him into death, burial, and resurrection. God is able to delight in me in the here and now because His righteousness is upon me in Christ.
Jesus operated from union with God in full measure. His being and doing were fully eclipsed and yet even He grew into Himself. There was a moment in which He realized He was born of a different Father than that of His peers. His life was drawn from a different Source. Once He saw His Father He did what He saw His Father doing. The mystifying plan to re-birth humanity was set in motion. A new breed was seeded, and Jesus was the first born among many brethren.
Jesus walked in unpolluted union with God. He was not born of Adam, thus He never knew the seed of separation. He was capable of sin, yet without sin. He had only One Father. He was not adopted, grafted in, born again, rebirthed, or redeemed. He was always born from above and yet even Jesus (Son of God, God with us, God in the flesh, or God as His own sacrificial Lamb) deferred goodness, glory, and honor to the Father. This helps me to understand that even though He was one with His Father, He did not claim to be the Father. Humility and reverence was exampled; He kept pride in check – never to boast equality with God. His revelation of oneness with His Father never weakened the mystery of the Holy Trinity – in which I also now live, move, and have my being.
I walk in the light as He is in the light. I am perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect. I experience light and perfection in the same way as God…but not in the same measure. Union infers the ability to draw upon the strength of another and to become like the other – when I see Him I shall be like Him – but being in likeness to Him is not the same as being His equal. He remains the Vine from which the branch draws life. I am nourished and bear the fruit of the Vine, but I remain the branch and He remains the life-giving Vine.
Trusting Him enough to ‘let Him do it’ means that Christ (in me, living as me) eventually does ‘it’ whatever ‘it’ may be. In that moment it may seem that I am the one doing the work because union can cause one to look like the other. But I can’t make it happen or even increase my own revelation of union any more than I can tame the ego or turn enemies into footstools. What is done is done in union. He is the power behind the action. My life in this flesh is lived by faith in His life in me. I do only what I know to do in each given moment. I do as I am bidden. I come to the inner sanctum and am ravished by His love…and even that is in response to His draw.
“The Christian often tries to forget his weakness: God wants us to remember it, to feel it deeply. The Christian wants to conquer his weakness and to be freed from it: God wants us to rest and even rejoice in it. The Christian mourns over his weakness: Christ teaches His servant to say, “I take pleasure in infirmities; most gladly will I glory in my infirmities.” The Christian thinks his weakness his greatest hindrance in the life and service of God: God tells us that it is the secret of strength and success. It is our weakness, heartily accepted and continually realized, that gives us our claim and access to the strength of Him who has said, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.””
Andrew Murray