Phil,
To summarize, are you saying that when you sit or kneel down, with merely
the intention of waiting and listening for God's voice, that He "takes you"
to that quiet place, and all you have to do is "allow" Him to do it? That
would be great, but what about the idea of "meditating" on His laws and what
they mean to you, and do you think there's anything wrong with putting some
concentration on the fact that Jesus is real, that He is here, that He can
move and speak in any way He chooses, or doing the act of listening with
your inner ears? Yet even when I ask these questions, I now realize that if
I really want to hear what God has to say to me personally, I must not try
to conjure up thoughts, for they might block His ideas from coming through.
I've been pondering the idea of surrendering wholly to Him with the picture
of Him doing everything through me, rather than me, using my own efforts
with my own sense of sincerity. In other words, rather than me struggling
to make myself say, "Yes, Lord, I am willing to do anything for you,
including going through the worst torture and saying no to the earthly
things I want the most, and slowly and agonizingly laying my life down for
You," just saying, "Lord, please make Your Thoughts my thoughts, Your Will
my will, Your Motivations my motivations, Your Emotions my emotions, Your
Dreams my dreams!" (Note that I capitalized each of His noun items, but not
my noun items.) I wish, I hope, that this is the key to being a Christian,
growing in His Grace, knowing Him, and making the total surrender! Even as
I wrote this, and the thought that, but surely I must make some effort and
decision toward God, using the ability that God gave me to do so, troubles
me, I've come to the idea that, perhaps, the efforts that I seem to make in
moving toward surrendering my body as a living sacrifice, as in "In Him we
live, and move, and have our being," must come as the result of all the
transferring of God's desires to my empty vessel so that they become my own
desires, wanting exactly what He wants, not from my dragging my feet to self
deprivation to do what He wants me to do.
Sharon
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