Seeing the price of our redemption, how can we do other than to give ourselves totally to the Lord Jesus? "By the mercies of God I beseech you," pleads Paul in Romans 12. Throughout the preceding eleven chapters he has recounted them, God's divine mercies, all the way. God's love led Christ to die for us in the first place, so as to give us His life, that we might walk in newness of life. Secondly, that same love of God draws us back to Jesus again and again due to the multiple mercies of God which are fresh to us every morning! Faced by love that is so utterly selfless, it becomes very difficult for us to continue to live in self. In fact it is harder for us to withhold than to offer ourselves to Him.

To be a Christian for years without total dedication to God is a wholly astounding thing, for were we not bought with the measureless price of Christ's death? The precious soul life of God Himself was poured out for us, in the blood that Jesus shed on the cross! Jesus Christ is God in the person of His Holy Spirit now, but at that time when Jesus was on the earth, this man Jesus was God in the flesh! It was God who died for us and rose from the dead as a man in the person of Jesus Christ! Our willing choice therefore is surely to glorify God in all that we are, not just in our hearts, but also in mind, emotion and will. Why? "Which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19). This is His sovereign right, not some sort of favour that we are doing for Him! I am not my own anymore, I have been bought by God at tremendous price to Him, henceforth I am His property.

Shall I now take this great love of God with all the freedom I have received to glorify my self by doing my own thing? Dare I play games with God out of what is His and out of what He has done for me? If I do, and I say this very solemnly to some, then I will shortly be entangled once again with the yoke of bondage that I was previously delivered from. The end result is that I will once again enter into bondage with Satan and reap oppression from the devil's hand. Bondage to self, as is bondage to sin or the world, is bondage to Satan! Satan always pays off to all that are in bondage to him. I believe that many good Christians are sick today for this very same reason.

Today in the real Church, which is the very body of God on earth in the flesh, may we agree right here and now that we are God's property and that we are no longer our own. May we come fully into harmony with God's plan and purpose for our lives. "Lord Jesus! ...all that I have and all that I am is yours, both now and forever" Amen?