Prepare to Yield

Yesterday, as I was driving to Tess’ track meet, I really wanted to look in the rearview mirror to check my hair since I was having a bad hair day like I do most days (I am convinced that God gave me bad hair to keep my humble), but I was on the highway and big trucks were coming at me and I had to stay on my side of the road, so I decided to fight the desire to evaluate my hairstyle.

Here’s the deal.  I really, really wanted to look in the mirror, but I knew I had to keep my eyes straight ahead to be safe, so I did, because I knew that doing anything else would just be foolish.

I wanted to “yield” to myself, not to the road, but I forced myself to keep my attention on my driving.  I did not do what came naturally.  Why do I not always make this choice when it comes to really important things?  Why do I often feel like I can’t fight my “natural” impulses?  Because I have allowed myself to be controlled by things other than Christ.  Oswald Chambers says it like this:

The first thing I must be willing to admit when I begin to examine what controls and dominates me is that I am the one responsible for having yielded myself to whatever it may be. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because somewhere in the past I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because at some point in my life I yielded myself to Him.

... There is no power within the human soul itself that is capable of breaking the bondage of the nature created by yielding. For example, yield for one second to anything in the nature of lust, and although you may hate yourself for having yielded, you become enslaved to that thing. (Remember what lust is— "I must have it now," whether it is the lust of the flesh or the lust of the mind.) No release or escape from it will ever come from any human power, but only through the power of redemption. You must yield yourself in utter humiliation to the only One who can break the dominating power in your life, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. ". . . He has anointed Me . . . to proclaim liberty to the captives . . ."

When you yield to something, you will soon realize the tremendous control it has over you. Even though you say, "Oh, I can give up that habit whenever I like," you will know you can’t. You will find that the habit absolutely dominates you because you willingly yielded to it. It is easy to sing, "He will break every fetter," while at the same time living a life of obvious slavery to yourself. But yielding to Jesus will break every kind of slavery in any person’s life.

What are you allowing yourself to “yield” to?  Anything other than Jesus is going to cause you to crash.

And that would give you a really bad hair day.

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Romans 6:16