Are you ALL in?

I was asked to be the speaker of the main message for our morning church service yesterday. I felt the Lord leading me to speak about consecration, being set apart, and being sold out for Him. Here's a bit of what I spoke about:

For those of you who’ve seen Fireproof, you might remember the scene where Caleb, the main character told his friend he had made a decision for Christ. He said to him “okay, I’m in”

His friend joyously said “You’re in? Are you all in?”

“Yes, I’m all in!”

That’s exactly where I want to be.. ALL in, hopelessly devoted to Jesus, so lovesick that I will do whatever I must to please Him, to care more about what He thinks than what any man or woman thinks of me. To be like the woman who broke her alabaster jar of expensive perfume to anoint her Lord.

And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.”

But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.” Matthew 26:6-13 NKJV

I don’t want to straddle fences, half on God’s path and half on my own. I want to be ALL in, fully committed to His will and His ways.

There is no such thing as partial commitment when the pilot of a giant airliner is speeding down a runway. There is a certain point where he cannot decide to remain on the ground. That pilot cannot change his mind when the plane is two-thirds of the way down the runway. Once he crosses that line, he is committed to the air, or the plane crashes disastrously.

I don’t want to miss what God needs from me because I was afraid to leave the ground.

C.S. Lewis relates, “When I was a child, I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother, she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother--at least not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this: I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else. I knew she would take me to the dentist the next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from my pain; but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists; I knew they would start fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache.”

I don’t want to walk around in needless pain because I’m afraid of “getting fixed”. Better to suffer through the work God needs to do in my life and come through stronger, cleaner, better reflecting His light.

Whatever the Lord asks of me, I pray I would respond like Mary when the angel told her she would give birth to the Son of God, even knowing the difficulties she would face:

"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her." Luke 1:38 NIV

I also want to obey without question, without hesitation. If He says jump, might I only ask “how high?” I know that kind of radical obedience is not only difficult, but almost impossible to our fleshly natures. Yet this is what I feel He calls me to.

Romans 11:36 NIV says "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen."

All I am is in Him. All I am is for Him. I’m in. ALL in.