For me to just say “yes” is not a DO NOT GO TO JAIL pass allowing me to continue with life as I had been living it. Father might give me healing to demonstrate His love, but there is a need for me to desire and allow change. Otherwise, what’s the use? Why should God grant me my “wish” only to have me remain in the state in which I began? What good is that? How does that help me to remain healed?
I have found that my saying “yes” to God has two parts. The first is an expression of my desire. More importantly, it is permission for Him to be involved. The second aspect of “yes” is the desire to grow and change. I cannot overemphasize this enough; my life in relational-faith with Father God is a life of growth and change. That’s why I left the organized institutional church in the first place. There I found no impetus to grow. Here in relational-faith, I am loved by Him and He loves me. I want to grow out of love for Him.
No, this is not a free gift in the sense of me doing nothing to invest some of myself. I must float out of the way in yes and submission. In the midst of all of this work, I must continue to stay out of His way and keep saying, “yes.” I must do whatever it is that Father counsels me to do or invites me into. I must be proactive in this process. I must be willing to be transformed into the new, whole being that Beloved God designed me to become in the first place.
I have also discovered another fundamental aspect to this process of transformation. That is always the case. I must be willing to give up something I neither need or actually want in order to make spiritual room for what I do want. I’ve found that there is a need to let go of whatever it is that’s hurting me to make room for what it is that Father wants to give me. This too is a big part of saying “yes”.
There is a simple process of letting go that a friend of mine leads me through to help me. I’ve come to understand now that I can do this on my own in Father’s Presence. But at times, I don’t always see what is needed or how really very simple this release is, and so my friend’s help aids my focus.
What she has me to is in the Spirit. I see or visualize the thing that I am willing to release. I hold it out offering it to Father or to Jesus in both hands – palms up. I then see Him take it from me. I wait because His gift for me is then placed in my open, upturned hands.
Often I don’t know what it is that I’ve received. For me seeing in the Spirit is somewhat abstract. No matter, I almost always understand the precious power and significance of His gift to me. I know in my heart that this gift is many times more precious and more powerful than the misery that I’ve just let go of.
It’s interesting to me how all of this happens. On the one hand, God is willing and able to provide all that’s needed for my healing – spiritual and physical – but there is always something I must be willing to give up to receive what He has for me. I don’t always know what His gift will be. I am very often pleasantly surprised.
Release is the central aspect of the “yes.” I must freely let go of what it is that’s making me sick, spiritually or physically. I need to allow Father to make room within me for the new healed reality that He wants to give me – Amen.
God is not going to just zap me into becoming some new healed person so that I can just go out and destroy myself all over again. That’s not what will help me to become something new. That’s nothing more than codependency – He gives, I take, nothing changes. Nope, that’s not how love works.
Love offers the best of things, not items or objects, but things which empower us to become our true selves as God Himself designed us to become. That true self is a reflection of Him – period. That true self knows something of and lives in His Presence and His love. That true self loves to do what it is that it is designed to do and be – especially the be.
Always,
Lew Curtiss
