1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Or do you
not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you
have from God? You are not your own, for you were
bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
For it is
not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is
not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us
the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be
infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will
accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give
us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will
retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it;
there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary’ life.” I
do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even
an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life
will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will
be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part
of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be
as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted—what must exist only as an
undefeated but daily resisted enemy—is the idea of something that is “our own,”
some area in which we are to be ‘out of school,’ on which God has no
claim.
For He
claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has
us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an
area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with
Him.
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