Abandonment

For several weeks, I’ve been meeting with the Lord over The Message’s translation of Psalm 40.

Perhaps the hardest part of belonging to God is deciding to lay down the right to defend ourselves [in the flesh], when people are mean.

In Psalm 40, King David calls on us to “abandon ourselves to God” and “enter the mystery.”

I’ve been meditating on the meaning of abandonment. We can abandon all hope, we can abandon spouse or children, we can abandon jobs. What does it mean to abandon something or someone?

To give up the rights to, to deliberately fail to defend, to deliberately refuse to provide for. If we are incapable of defending someone, that’s not abandonment. If we are somehow incapacitated, we can neglect others or ourselves. But abandonment implies a deliberate choice to give up something.

As ministers of the gospel, we are called to make a deliberate and conscious choice to abandon ourselves to God. The mystery King David references is what happens when we abandon ourselves to God [give up our right to defend ourselves, to be ambitious for ourselves], and in so doing, we find we are safer because God is our defender.

He will not be moved. He will not be defeated. He will overcome.

That’s why Jesus tells us to pray for those who persecute us; those folks need our prayers because they are not striving with us, they have to deal with our Big Daddy, Who is God Almighty. In Isaiah, God tells us, His people, “He who touches you touches the apple of my eye.”

We know how quick we are to defend our children when they are threatened. Imagine how quickly then God will jump to our defense, even if we cannot see Him doing so.
We need to get out of God’s way, and let Him do the defending.

That requires trust, and self-control that is beyond my fleshly ability. The Holy Spirit must empower me to do so.

Let’s pray that the Holy Spirit will reinforce our trust in God by reminding us daily of how God has come to our rescue in the past, and how God has never failed us in the present. In other words, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Amen.”

Enter the Mystery

Psalm 40 (The Message)

A David Psalm
1-3 I waited and waited and waited for GOD. At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
pulled me from deep mud.
He stood me up on a solid rock
to make sure I wouldn't slip.
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song,
a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
they enter the mystery,
abandoning themselves to GOD. 4-5 Blessed are you who give yourselves over to GOD,
turn your backs on the world's "sure thing,"
ignore what the world worships;
The world's a huge stockpile
of GOD-wonders and God-thoughts.
Nothing and no one
comes close to you!