Extreme Faith

She was a little girl. The Nazis came and dragged her family away to a brutal concentration camp. Within weeks her whole family had perished, their smoke curling gray from the prison stacks. Somehow, one day, she alone found her way to a hole in the mighty, concertina covered wall, and faded through it like a ghostly shadow when the officers weren’t looking. She found her way to a cave miles away and crept gratefully into its blackness. Who knows what happened after that? Maybe the rains caused a landslide that buried the cave mouth. Or perhaps, she backed further and further in, terrified eyes fixed on the light until it grew too small to be seen. Then her hands could not feel their way back out. All I know is that someone stumbled on that cave long after the Liberation. They found two things: one was the fragile skeleton of a child. The other was etched on the opposite wall, “My God, you are my all in all…”

What if God held out His hands and asked you to give up everything? If serving Him meant that you would live without light, love, happiness, and security. If it meant suffering day by day, never to marry, find friendship, or enjoy security: in short, to give up on all that humanity values, what would you say? How far will you take your faith?

“If any man comes after me, He must deny Himself, take up His cross and follow me.” God has called to to absorb yourself in Him, burning your will as a sacrifice before Him. No personal goal shall supersede Him in your thoughts or activities. God loves you more than you can imagine and will not willingly cause you to suffer, but someday, He may allow persecution, physical suffering, and such relational tumult as may never be resolved in this life. You will not even have the right to ask ‘why’.

Now is the time to evaluate your priorities. Are you holding tightly to a possession, relationship, or career? If so, you will resist God when He removes it from your grasp, instead of responding with trust and poise.   When you lay down your last dream to follow hard after God, you will break. It’s like dying. Then, you will feel the breath of God like you never have before. Suddenly, He will be your all in all. Neither riches nor poverty will be able to move you.

So if God takes your dearest desires, and even the basic elements that seem to be unalienable human rights, if He beckons you into a labyrinthine cave, never again to see the light of day, will the skeleton of your will be found to testify, “You are my all in all…”?