In your opinion, which is the more challenging: diving headfirst into the frigid water of the deep end of a swimming pool and acclimating quickly, or creeping tortuously down the steps of the shallow end – an inch at a time and shivering the entire way – until your whole body is finally submerged?
I recall reading the account of a British second officer aboard the RMS Titanic who had been working furiously on the boat deck helping to get passengers, beginning with women and children, off the doomed ocean liner and into lifeboats. After all of the boats had been lowered and were away, he watched as the water began to overtake the clustering crowds of people who had retreated toward the stern of the badly listing ship. Instead of an agonizing wait for the freezing black depths to overtake him, he made a choice. He decided to take a “header” and dove headlong into the icy surge!
His decision at first appeared to be a mistake, as he was pulled down and pinned against a metal grate by the force of water rushing into the ship through a ventilator. As he held his breath, hoping that the grate would not collapse, a boiler explosion well below the deck sent a burst of hot air to the surface and blew him far enough from the maelstrom that he was able to swim, gasping, to an overturned collapsible lifeboat to which several other men were clinging. He was later rescued.
I remember being impressed at the time with the spiritual symbolism of this account, and it has stayed with me ever since. The decision of the disciplined sailor to go “all in” was for him the difference between life and death.
Am I “all in” with regard to my relationship with Jesus?
The answer will often require some serious, and sometimes painful, introspection. The times we as believers find ourselves the most miserable are those when we have merely dipped a toe into the icy water of the unknown and are vacillating over our next step and our intended level of commitment, considering even the possibility of waiting until the weather gets “warmer”; until conditions “improve”, and the “water” is more conducive to taking that imposing “leap of faith.”
In his daily devotionals Oswald Chambers wrote often of the need for “total abandonment” of ourselves as believers to God. That is, by far, the most difficult thing for our (my) flesh to contemplate. It was this same voluntary self-abandonment that enabled the Son of God to brave His own dark descent into death, relinquishing His authority to summon 10,000 angels to His rescue, and believing that His Father would raise Him back up again. Am I willing to be accused by others of going “overboard” in my passion for Jesus? His sacrificial choice to be “all in” became our very salvation, and we are faced with the exact same choice as our Lord: to cast ourselves with abandon upon the unfathomable love, grace, and mercy of our heavenly Father!
Philippians 2:5-11 NASB “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
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The best preachers are the ones who will tell you, with honesty, that God preached the message to them before they ever preached it to their congregation. Before you or I can proclaim God’s Word to God’s people with any sense of power or authority, the Cross – the pangs of Holy Spirit conviction and the healing result of Self-surrender – must first be applied to my own heart and life.
Bryan
Fracas In The Family :) 