At the End Is the Beginning

My life’s not my own anymore, I can say,

I surrendered it long ago and now every single day,

I count what is lost only a gain,

Because with Christ my life’s spiritually sane.

***

Like so many, my experience of salvation was the beginning of life—not the end.

Sometimes we see before us a great precipice. As we approach that rock bottom experience—the absolute pit of despair—we come not to the end of life, but truly to the beginning of it.

God reframes life from the perspective of eternity.

We have invested all of our energy and all of our identity in this one life that we knew. When that life came to a close we perhaps began to understand there was more to life than what we knew. When that knowledge entered our heads and penetrated into our hearts, we began to see life completely anew.

We suddenly discovered that the surrendered life is the only true life; the abundant life where the seen worldly concern withers and fades in comparison to the unseen realities that are backed in God’s truth.

When we arrived at this place—that brand-new beginning—we sensed that we had been taken there for a reason. God purposed the low time would not be an end in itself, but, on the basis of our attitude to draw near to him, he would revive us, and give us something we never dared imagine.

As we experience this life, this new energy, this new worldview, this newly settled nature, we become instinctive regarding our reactions to all things in life. Our responses are measured by calm poise, as we seek to discern what the Spirit is saying for us to do.

When my life is no longer my own, I, for the first time, truly begin to understand God.

God has brought me here for a reason. God has withdrawn everything I have loved in order that he may be seen for who he is—a redemptive God who will give me eternity for a question.

The old life was a question.

We always lived in the question. We always endured uncertainty.

Now with God there is a paradox of uncertainty. We live in accepting unparalleled uncertainty and we are never happier because certainty is no longer our yardstick or goal. We have been delivered of such fear, because to need to know certainty is a want of being God. Instead, we allow God to be God and we take a position of truly relying and trusting.

Such is freedom!

***

The beauty of life that is no longer our own is we don’t need to have the answers. It is such a comfort to know we are nothing without God, but in God we are everything. And we can do all things through him who strengthens us, if we would abide by his will and surrender. There and then we taste freedom—in that God-space of reliance and trust.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.