When, by grace, we can be honest with ourselves and God, we will abandon ourselves to the mercies of God in Christ.  Only those who are brought to this honesty wholeheartedly ever do this.  Everybody else keeps “trying”–viciously beating one’s head against the proverbial “wall.”

Dedicated to everyone who casts him- or herself entirely on Jesus.

The most important thing a sinner can do, is to come to Christ with absolutely no resources whatsoever.  Until we admit that we cannot do this life thing on our own; and that everything we have sought out as an object of fulfillment has not fulfilled us; and that we are totally destitute of any more ideas for how we can solve our problems–we will remain miserable lost souls.

. . . But, if, by grace, we come to God in Jesus Christ, in prayer; and cast ourselves entirely on him, admitting that we are at the “ends” of our “ropes”; and that we truly and finally “give up”–and then, by grace though faith throw ourselves on Christ and His mercy, we enter a new world we could never have imagined; and this new kingdom, thoroughly centered on Christ, reorients everything in us and about us.

The Publican, in the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, from Lk. 18:9-14, essentially came to God as one who had “given up” trying–even the “religious” things.  He knew he had no chance/no righteousness/no respectability/no societal standing/nothing.  So, what did he do?  He cast himself on the mercy of God; and then spoke the honest truth about who and what he was, (a “sinner”).

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