Spiritual Abandonment (Part 1)

SPIRITUAL ABANDONMENT (Part 1)

For the next two days I want to share a devotional from one of the classic devotional authors, Jeanne Guyon.

"Great faith produces great abandonment. What is abandonment? If we can understand what it is, perhaps we can better lay hold of it.

Abandonment is casting off all your cares. Abandonment is dropping all your needs. This includes spiritual needs. Let me repeat that, for it is not easily grasped. Abandonment is laying aside, forever, all of your spiritual needs.

All Christians have spiritual needs; but the believer who has abandoned himself to the Lord no longer indulges in the luxury of being aware of spiritual needs. Rather, he gives himself over completely to the disposal of God.

Do you realize that all Christians have been exhorted to abandonment? There must be abandonment in your life concerning all outward, practical things. Secondly, there must also be an abandonment of all inward, spiritual things. You must come to the Lord and there engage in giving up all your concerns. All your concerns go into the hand of God. You forget yourself, and from that moment on you think only of Him.

By continuing to do this over a long period of time, your heart will remain unattached; your heart will be free and at peace! So how do you practice abandonment? You practice it daily, hourly, and by the moment. Abandonment is practiced by continually losing your OWN will in the will of God; by plunging your will into the depths of HIS will, there to be lost forever!

And how do you begin? You must begin by reusing every personal desire that comes to you just as soon as it arises - no matter how good that personal desire is, and no matter how helpful it might appear! Abandonment must reach a point where you stand in complete indifference to yourself. You can sure that out of such a disposition a wonderful result will come." From Jeanne Guyon - HIS VICTORIOUS INDWELLING (Zondervan) (732-350-1187 ext. 31)

Great Quote: When trust is perfect and there is no doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand ready to receive. Trust perfected is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless or that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So, what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust. E. M. Bounds