ABANDONMENT TO GOD--ITS FRUIT AND ITS IRREVOCABILITY--IN WHAT IT
CONSISTS--GOD EXHORTS US TO IT.
It is here that true _abandonment_ and consecration to God should
commence, by our being deeply convinced that all which happens to us
moment by moment is the will of God, and therefore all that is necessary
to us.
This conviction will render us contented with everything, and will make
us see the commonest events in God, and not in the creature.
I beg of you, whoever you may be, who are desirous of giving yourselves
to God, not to take yourselves back when once you are given to Him, and
to remember that a thing once given away is no longer at your disposal.
_Abandonment_ is the key to the inner life: he who is thoroughly
abandoned will soon be perfect.
You must, then, hold firmly to your abandonment, without listening to
reason or to reflection. A great faith makes a great abandonment; you
must trust wholly in God, against hope believing in hope (Rom. iv. 18).
_Abandonment_ is the casting off of all care of ourselves, to leave
ourselves to be guided entirely by God.
All Christians are exhorted to abandonment, for it is said to all, "Take
no thought for the morrow; for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have
need of all these things" (Matt. vi. 32, 34). "In all thy ways
acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Prov. iii. 6). "Commit
thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established" (Prov.
xvi. 3). "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall
bring it to pass" (Ps. xxxvii. 5).
Abandonment, then, ought to be an utter leaving of ourselves, both
outwardly and inwardly, in the hands of God, forgetting ourselves, and
thinking only of God. By this means the heart is kept always free and
contented.
Practically it should be a continual loss of our own will in the will
of God, a renunciation of all natural inclinations, however good they
may appear, in order that we may be left free to choose only as God
chooses: we should be indifferent to all things, whether temporal or
spiritual, for the body or the soul; leaving the past in forgetfulness,
the future to providence, and giving the present to God; contented with
the present moment, which brings with it God's eternal will for us;
attributing nothing which happens to us to the creature, but seeing all
things in God, and regarding them as coming infallibly from His hand,
with the exception only of our own sin.
Leave yourselves, then, to be guided by God as He will, whether as
regards the inner or the outward life.