letting go

Speaking of giving up everything to follow Christ.  I'm really wondering if any of us really have let go of this world for Him.  It seems that salvation is the first step that opens the door to eternal security with God, but somewhere along the line it gets cut short and the layering of fully following Him stops.  It's not supposed to stop.

There's a fullness to knowing God that so many of us are missing.  There's more I need to let go of so I can follow Him more fully and it feels like my white knuckled spiritual hands may crumble in the letting go.  And the verse where Jesus says that it's "easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven", comes to mind.  Don't get me wrong here, I'm confident I will be in heaven after this life.  However, those of us reading this on our computer or smart phone... we live in excess, like this rich man.  There are all kinds of things we couldn't see ourselves going without, and if God asked us to eliminate something from our lives or to eliminate parts of those "important" things we'd be hard pressed.

Once it finally happens and we release our expectations of this life, our possessions, our schedule to the Lord we wonder why it took so long to give over something that in all actuality means little to nothing in exchange for a closer more intimate relationship with the Creator of the Universe, for His infinitely perfect vision & direction on our lives, for real Hope, for everything that means everything.

Paul said it best:
 "More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith," (Phil 3:8-9, NASB).