YIELD

Today I feel overwhelmed with thankfulness that I belong to God. I'm so thankful that I have been given knowledge of who He is...not the knowledge that puffs up, but the knowledge that renews my mind to live the way He lives. It's knowledge that renews my mind to think the way He thinks. What a gift! What kind of stinking evil would I be without His transforming kindness?

It makes me feel hungry to know more about Him. It makes me hungry to have more discernment. If His ways are higher than mine, than I desire to know His ways better than I know my own...to spend more time in His ways than in my ways. If His thoughts are truly higher than mine, I want to dwell on His thoughts more often than I dwell on mine. It seems that His ways and His thoughts are a higher reality than my simple, faulty ways and thinking. I want to live out of His reality. It's a high goal. 1 Corinthians 2:16 says, "For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? But WE HAVE the mind of Christ."  I have the mind of Christ! I can know the ways and thoughts of the Lord because I've been given the mind of Christ. Come renew my mind, Holy Spirit. Transform me to look like You, think like You, speak like You.

This sounds like Jesus. He said on earth He only spoke what He heard the Father say. He only did what He saw the Father do. He knew the thoughts of the Father. He knew the ways of the Father. He laid aside His deity when He came to this earth. He spoke these words as a human. As a human, Jesus KNEW the Father, which means to dwell in the higher reality of the Father's ways and thoughts is possible for me, too. HOW? I believe Jesus accomplished this, not by having super powers, but by laying His powers down. He fully yielded Himself to know the Father. He fully yielded His ways and His thoughts to abide in the ways and thoughts of His Father. Intimacy comes when we yield to the One we want to know. I think knowing the ways and thoughts of God must come at the expense of getting to exercise our own ways and thoughts. Jesus was tempted by satan to do things His own way and to not go to the cross. If He was tempted, it means He had to wrestle with laying down His own options before submitting to the way of the cross the Father had laid out for Him...if the King of kings had to wrestle to lay down His will, how much more do I need to make this a daily (if not moment to moment) discipline?

My hunger is growing and the road is getting more narrow. It's so narrow that there isn't even room enough to turn around and get out. I have no where to go but towards the more narrow. I'm hooked. I must know more of who He is. I must know how He thinks and how He operates. I must know, because in knowing, I will find the highest reality of how to live. I will find out who I am meant to be in light of who He is. I will know Him in yieldedness.