“Thy people shall be a freewill offering in the day of Thy power” (Ps. cx.
3).
This is what the term consecration properly means. It is the voluntary
surrender or self-offering of the heart, by the constraint of love to be
the Lord’s. Its glad expression is, “I am my Beloved’s.” It must spring,
of course, from faith. There must be the full confidence that we are safe
in this abandonment, that we are not falling over a precipice, or
surrendering ourselves to the hands of a judge, but that we are sinking
into a Father’s arms and stepping into an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is
an infinite inheritance. Oh, it is an infinite privilege to be permitted
thus to give ourselves up to One who pledges Himself to make us all that
we would love to be, nay, all that His infinite wisdom, power and love
will delight to accomplish in us. It is the clay yielding itself to the
potter’s hands that it may be shaped into a vessel of honor, and meet for
the Master’s use. It is the poor street waif consenting to become the
child of a prince that he may be educated and provided for, that he may be
prepared to inherit all the wealth of his guardian.