Common in our Christian experience is the revelation that our lives are not our own. The simple purity of this revelation is all we need to move forward. The only thing God does not own is our will. The only thing God desires from us is our will. Our will and God’s will are not meant to mix. Our will has only carnal interests. God’s will has only eternal interests.
When the lines of what God does and what we do become blurred or uncertain, we should stop. We should stop! The longer we continue to allow our knowledge of good and evil to direct us, the tighter the blindfold becomes. When we continue to resist or ignore the nudging of the Holy Spirit and rely on our knowledge of good and evil, we will fall into a ditch. Worse, we may be responsible for taking others into the ditch with us.
A life-style of full surrender does not allow us to harbor any affection for our own plans no matter how good they appear. We must, in the end, acknowledge that holiness is full surrender.
This type of surrender:
- Listens to the Holy Spirit
- Hears His voice and only then
- Acts by and through His power.
Matt 18:18 speaks to this tension within us: “Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
And Matt 16:19 confirms, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
“A. T. Roberston, one of this century’s leading Greek scholars, also comments on Matt 16:19 “To ‘bind’ in a rabbinical language is to forbid, to ‘loose’ is to permit… Dr. Roberstson’s comment about the use of the future perfect tense is important. If we were to translate the passage very literally (though awkwardly in English), it would read “…whatever you loose on earth shall having been loosed in heaven.” This shows that the disciples were not unilaterally to decide a matter, thus binding ‘heaven’ to their decision. It means that their decision, as Dr. Roberston suggests, will be in line with what already was God’s mind on the issue.”
Full surrender and heavenly mindedness takes time even in our prayer life. Our knowledge of good and evil has no business in our prayers. To be free of its influence on our prayers, we must die to those affections that are not from the heart of God.
Prayer, in its purest form, is a response to the revelation of the Father’s heart, which is shared with us by the Holy Spirit. When this heart sharing comes to us, the purity with which we pray is noticeable. We will have an inner sense that we have come along side the heart of God and that His Holy Spirit is praying through us.