blessed with "nothing"
“We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord
out of fear for their safety.”
Do me a favor and hold out your hands. Palms up, spread your fingers out. Everyone in position? That says, "I have everything, I possess nothing." Now close your hands. Make a fist. Squeeze. That says, "I have what I want. I possess. Mine."
Neat week. Thanks guys for walking with me through this precious work by Tozer. If you believe there is a "blessedness of possessing nothing" would you say amen in the comment section? But I admit, when Tozer prays, "Father I want to know you, but my cowardly heart fears to give up its toys," I am particularly convicted.
Like you, I can find myself worrying about my fleeting health, my dwindling bank account, my depreciating assets, my lack of influence, my staggering status, my place at the table. But if I've learned and am learning anything over the last few years, it's that I realize I really, really, really don't possess anything.
With my health in particular, even my finest and fittest days won't be a footnote in eternity. Bless God, as much as I miss the chalk flying and tightening my belt for battle, I'm finished and done with training to compete with my "yesterday" or working to determine my reflection of tomorrow. Sure, the science guy inside me will miss the principle and I will continue to care for these aging bones, but I'm focused on several lifetimes from now. I'm thinking long-term. When it comes to my outlook on training, I have 10,000-year goals.
Anything less than an eternal outlook of the body is a tragedy.
"Father, please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for You will be the light of it."
It may not happen today, but I pray each of us can stamp our heel into whatever "thing" has had us bound. Could be body image, social media pressure, status, supreme fitness, debilitating illness, name it. In a world that demands that we possess everything - may we raise our weary hands, turn over our palms, open our little fingers and say, tis blessed to possess nothing. I have Jesus - my everything.
-Jimmy Peña
