The Importance of Giving Something Up

SUCH STRENGTH as can hardly be made known is made known in the simple matter of giving something up that has a hold over us.

We, fallen and imperfect human creatures, are given to the embrace of many idolatries for which God has purposed we surrender at the foot of the cross of Christ. This is for our own good – not God’s. God is really the provedore of this sanctuary of learning, of exploration, of growth. We must see this with eyes that see, for unless we do, we will never have the reason to sustain our initial efforts at letting go these idolatries.

The importance of giving something up – one thing at a time – is never more poignant in this: we were saved for the very purpose of turning away from our underpinning idolatries back to God, who can heal and restore us.

But we ought to know, as if we don’t already, for many times we do know, and we do actively wrestle, that it will be near-on impossible to give something up – with sustainability – without it being a miracle of God

Casting Ourselves On The Mercies of God

The only chance we have of instituting change in our lives is to fall on our knees before God and beg his help. Only when things get so desperate do we avail of ourselves all our effort, all our commitment, and the propulsion of all our hopes upon God. Our fullest devotion to the change desired is the requirement of God if we are to receive the miracle of Divine Grace to redeem a strength that can only be ascribed as beyond us.

Such strength for change is vital as it is mandatory. It is this that sustainability is henceforth contingent.

God’s mercy – the prevalence of grace – is on our side to the tune of our obedience. God knows we have to give up these idolatries – one at a time – if we are to experience any of his manifest glories in this lifetime.

We lose only what we cannot keep and we gain, in our giving something up that has us bound, the very essence of something eternal – that which we can never lose.

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We all have idolatries that keep us from being more fully blessed. God’s miraculous nature will purge us of the things that bind us to the world, but we must choose to give them up. When we add our fullest commitment to change, God adds his strength, and a miracle is in sight. Change may be sustained.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.