“You are not your own.” (1 Corinthians 6:20)

I find that kelp swaying in the ocean is a good analogy for my life. It wobbles and in the limbo of the current and never really finds its resting place because it is only committed in one area, the bottom. So I have not been wholly committed in life to Christ, but only at one point, yet grace demands all, more, fullness, because its free in fullness.

So I have the anchor of my soul, the blessed Savior of the weak, stupid, blind, downcast, lame, ugly, and totally unworthy as my holding place. He has kept me alive in this haze of life, with nutrients gained photosynthesizing His true word and the illumination of the Spirit. But in this mass of vacillation in trying to go to school and then failing, trying to get a career and failing. I realized a few things.

Firstly, that I was trying to do it in my own strength, and failing miserably. Lost because I did not have a direct revelation of Gods specific will and discontent in my current situation I was grasping for the wind and always coming up short in every aspect. I just wanted something to ‘do’! But the gospel says, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Tim 6:8), and I was not content because I was not where ‘I’ wanted to be. Not resting in grace, trusting in a finished, beautifully accomplished redemption. But, my life is ‘not my own’, its His will not mine. I was striving in all of mans ways to get things done.

Second, I tried to do it an ignorant naïve faith. Keep in mind those two adjectives before faith for they are crucial. I was in folly not working and just foolishly saying, when I knew better, ‘The Lord will provide’ and He does by his grace. I was banking on it while being lazy, a sluggard of sorts. Which in the end turned to nothing, because I was still discontent and using the promises of God to get what I wanted. Using God for my own ends. Saying such things and then not acting upon them in dependence is truly vile. And it mocks the ‘actual’ provision that we receive form the Lord.

Then, the Lord put it in me to work, and to have faith, and to remember that I am, ‘not my own’ but I do what He says, knowing that He definitely calls his people to serve him and provides all, even contentment when he does, “For he who called you is faithful, and he also will do it” (1 Thess 5:24). So I found the goodness of the Lord in waiting, “The Lord is good to those who wait on him” (Lam 3:26), and worked hard unto his glory in contentment Him, “whatever you do work at it as working for the Lord, not for man” (Col 3:23). I found myself at the end of my rope, only with submission to grace to hold onto singing ever so sweetly with tears welling up face, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound,…I once was lost(in myself and in discontentment outside of God) but now I’m found.” I was found in the general will of doing it all for His glory, then in contentment in that, I was given the specific. Let us learn from Jeremiah Burroughs on what is true contentment: “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in Gods wise and fatherly disposal in every condition” Perhaps one day we will be so wrapped up in Gods love that this mental utopia found in Gods grace shall truly penetrate us unto absolute solidity.

So in conclusion, let us not work for ourselves, but remember that the gift of grace is slavery, to call God ours and for Him to call us His(Gal 4:9). So when we come to God, we get God, and nothing but God, “For whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil 3:7).

Here Hudson Taylor says it better than I:

“It makes no matter where he places me or how; that is rather for him to consider than me. For the easiest positions he must give me grace, and in the most difficult, his grace is sufficient. So, if God places me in great perplexity, must he not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? As to work, mine was never so plentiful, so responsible or so difficult, but the weight and the strain are all gone. His resources are mine, for He is mine.”

Read it again.

Christian freedom is being able to be anywhere in fullness because of the fullness of grace given in Christ.