The Deepening Root
If you watched our latest video about The PrayFit story on the homepage, you may have caught a line in there amid my suffering when I say, “I just resigned.” Basically, I gave up. I was in the grip of a stronger opponent and I had one choice. See, when you're down on the mat, and the wrestler has his grip on you - the grip that has made you powerless - fighting isn't the way out of his grasp. Surrender is.
Looking at the word surrender the last few days peels away layer after layer of worldly nonsense, stripping away all levels of "self" until you're left with the unavoidable and glorious conclusion that we are here to pursue God and everything that phrase entails. So complex, right? Especially among hard-chargers and fighters like us?
THE TEST
Well, I alluded yesterday that at one time in my life “progress” was my Isaac - my tolerable idol - and yet I was no Abraham. Well, something Tozer said has me shifting in my seat as I type this sentence. He called it The Testing Point.
He says, “If we are set upon the pursuit of God, He will sooner or later bring us to this test. We will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us - just one, and an alternative - but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make.”
And when it came to Abraham, God said to him in effect, "It's all right Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there."
HE KNOWS HIS RANK
See, Abraham has just made his heart right with God. He realizes his rank. He knows his place. And more importantly, he knows God's place. And God allows Abraham the gift of Isaac, and in effect all of the promises of God and the future generations.
Fast-forward to a weary, broken down fitness writer sharing his thoughts on the screen with some fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that he loves dearly. (That's you and me.) What does Abraham's story of surrender at his testing place have to do with us all these years later? What does the temple of his heart have to do with the temple of ours?
Tozer says. "The blessed ones have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the "poor in spirit." But the ancient curse will not go out painlessly. He will not lie down and die in obedience to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil. He must be expelled from our soil by violence."
NOT PAINLESS
Plainly put, if our pursuit of fitness or our battle with what’s broken isn't leading us to a deeper knowledge of God, then that ache - the deepening root - that buries itself within our fibers and nourishes our desire for great health needs to be uprooted by force. And guys, it's not painless. It doesn't go away easily. It doesn't lie down in obedience. But it's when we stop fighting, stop comparing, stop striving, stop masking; that's when we overcome the enemy. It's when we tap out - even if it means being in worse physical shape - that we gain all things. It's when we surrender that- "ours is the Kingdom of Heaven."
So with Thanksgiving tomorrow, may God root from our hearts those things which we have cherished so long and which have become a very part of our living selves. (Those things we can’t live without.)
It may not happen today, but I pray each of us can stamp our heel into whatever "thing" has had us bound. Could be body image, social media pressure, status, supreme fitness, debilitating illness and suffering, name it. In a world that demands that we possess everything - may we raise our weary hands with Thanksgiving in our hearts, turn over our palms, open our little fingers and say, tis blessed to possess nothing. I have Jesus - my everything.
And this, my friends, is the difference between commitment and surrender. At least, this is what it means to me.
- jimmy pena
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE.
Thankful for each of you and grateful to spend a few minutes with you each week…
