amor vincit omnia

letting go

i feel like there are more things to understand but it kinda clicked in my head right now. 

it’s not me but it must be Christ who lives in me…..

it’s why Apostle Paul says that His grace is sufficient for us..not the false notion of grace that makes us feel comfortable to stay in our sins..but the true grace that God gives us when we come to realize just how sinful and wicked we really are and how awesomely good and holy God is.

“We run, hiding behind trees, fleeing at the first glimpse of His robe, crying out, “But we’ve got grace!” - never understanding that it is in facing Him, in falling down before Him, in being utterly swept away and our old self completely destroyed, that we experience Grace as He is.  For grace is not a quality.  He himself is grace.  To have Grace is to have Him.  All of Him. It is why Paul can say, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).”

without His grace, we cannot even come to the point of understanding that we are nothing. without His grace, we will blindly believe that it is our works that will save us. without His grace, all we will feel is suffocation and restlessness. without His grace, we cannot know who He is.

but because of His grace, we can breathe. because of His grace, we understand that it is not what we do but what Christ in us will do. because of His grace, we realize that we truly are nothing but specks of dust in this universe. because of His grace, we understand who this God is that we say we love and serve. 

“Grace is not to stay who we are.  It is to completely abandon it.  If grace enables us to do what we never could, it is no longer I who live, but Christ.  Doing only what Christ could do, only what Christ WOULD do.  The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence in our lives that we are doing what we normally would not be doing and that we are not doing what we normally would be doing.  It is foolish to consider ourselves alive in Christ when we still laugh at coarse jokes, indulge in drunkenness, consume ourselves with materialism and ambition and it is a greater horror when we try to disguise them as acceptable, even enviable, spiritual practice.  We are not ‘improved’ or ‘patched up’ into the image of Christ.  We are born again.  There is no constantly improving ‘Me’ until I become like Christ. I must no longer live as Christ lives in me.  Grace is to realize that none of this is our work.  We do not put ourselves to death.  It is all His doing.  We don’t believe in a man-based “works salvation” but we do believe in a God-originated one.  God began the world with the work of creation.  Our curse was to work for what had been a free gift, His total provision.  Adam worked the ground as did Cain for what God had grown in the beginning.  Jacob worked for a wife, a woman - God had done it for free in Eden.  The Israelites had to work in Egypt, enslaved by a master with no compassion and their destruction in mind.  But God gave us the Sabbath as a promise, a prophetic sign of the rest that would come through Christ, when God would work in us through His Spirit and the work we do is no longer to attempt the impossible task of achieving righteousness with God but to do His righteous work.  For “we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). “

we cannot even choose Him ourselves and long to live a holy, righteous life. nothing in us by itself can ever want holiness and purity. nothing in us is good to even desire something that is of God. we, in our fleshly selves, just gravitate toward sin and nothing in us can stop that. it is God’s grace that allows us to even choose Him. it is His grace that gives us a longing for holiness. it is His grace that convicts us that this world is not our home but rather a den of robbers, a pile of rubbish, a graveyard. 

and due to His grace, we can never claim that all credit is due to us…because everything we do is because of His grace.

therefore,

i want to be like Mary..who literally fell at Jesus’ feet and ate every word He spoke. 
i want to be one who cares for the things that are of God’s concerns. 

all i want to do is just let go and fall backwards, not caring or fearing about what will come next. all i want to do is close my eyes, cross my arms, and just fall, surrendering my whole self to the will of the Father—whatever that may be. all i want to do is fall and pour my life’s wages at His feet and wash them with my tears and hair, even though my dirty, wicked self is so unworthy to come near His holiness. all i want to do is let go and fall upon this grace who has a name. 

ah, what beautiful rest that would be.