Abandon to God

It seems that a lot of my posts recently have been quotes from books. I love books!! I learn from the words of others. Even a simple sentence in a fiction book can stop me in my tracks and give me cause to think on the words. I even have a collection in my bullet journal where I record quotes that give me pause.

One word that keeps coming up in my reading is abandon, specifically abandon to God and His will. This total abandon is something for every Christian to meditate on, not just the missionary. The following quote by Oswald Chambers on Mark 14:6 is one that I had to read and reread. So many times we focus on personal holiness when in reality it is our total abandon that God wants.

For context, I have included Mark 14:1-6. This woman exhibits that total abandon.

After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. But they said, Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people. And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.

"Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness. Personal holiness focuses the eye on our own whiteness...fearful that we will offend Him. Perfect love casts out all that when once we are abandoned to God. We have to get rid of this notion-- 'Am I of any use?' and make up our minds that we are not, and we may be near the truth. It is never a question of being of use but of being of value to God Himself. When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time."   ~Oswald Chambers on 

Mark 14:6

*photo taken in the gardens of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, Japan