His verses Mine

One of the most profound questions to ask is am I mine own or am I His?

If I am simply mine then it is up to me to make it in the world. I need to use my strength, power, smarts and endurance to weave my way through this life and the next. It makes for a competitive rat race type existence where there is never enough and I am always in need.

If on the other hand I am His then he has certain responsibility for me and my life. It is His power at work and not my own. If I am His then I also have access to his power and resourcing in the life and the next.

God has made us his through Christ (see Ephesians 1). It is through our baptism that he joins us to himself through Christ (see Romans 6). We are His and not our own.

This is a wonderful and fearful statement. Wonderful because of all the benefits that come with grace; being an heir in the kingdom of God, a beloved child of God in and through Christ. Eternity itself is ours. Wow...

Fearful too. If I am His then I am not my own and I should live not to my glory but to his. We are to be about the business of giving ourselves and gifts away. This is to be our lifestyle. We do this because our life has been bought with a price and we have a new master.

We pray "thy will be done". Notice that we never pray "my will". Jesus tells us to "seek first the kingdom" (Matthew 6:33). The kingdom is his, not ours.

We forget this at the congregational level all the time. We think that things in the church are "ours". Nothing at the church is "ours" it is all his! If we have given something and still want to exercise control over our gift then we really haven't given a gift to the Lord, we have "loaned" it with strings attached. It would be better not to give the gift than to deceive ourselves into thinking we have given a gift.

Giving ourselves completely is the gateway to life. Jesus says that "whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but however gives his life for his sake will find it". There is no other path to true life than learning that everything is his and learning to live accordingly.