Relinquish

Elisabeth Elliot:

We are not often called to great sacrifice, but daily we are presented with the chance to make small ones—a chance to make someone cheerful, a chance to do some small thing to make someone comfortable or contented, a chance to lay down our petty preferences or cherished plans. This probably requires us to relinquish something—our own convenience or comfort, our own free evening, our warm fireside, or even our habitual shyness or reserve or pride. My liberty must be curtailed, bound down, ignored (oh, how the world hates this sort of thing! how our own sinful natures hate it!)—for the sake of the liberation of others.

“Every day we experience something of the death of Jesus, so that we may also show the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours” (2 Cor 4:10, JBP).

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Relinquishing is hard. "Our own free evening" really stood out for me in that list. If I happen to have a free evening, I SO look forward to it and woe betide anyone or anything that gets in its way! It can be so hard to curtail what we want for the sake of others. Reading through Philippians and Colossians recently has shown me how important striving and pushing forward is. I find it has been too easy to settle for the easier option recently, of not wanting to sacrifice for others and Christ's kingdom.

To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.... 

I want you to know how hard I am contending for you.

Col 1.29; 2.1

I love how Paul reminds us that it's not our own energy with which we contend (that has so often been my excuse:  I have no energy), but it is all about Christ's energy that works in us.

I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me...One thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal.

Phil 3.12-14