yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

So my decision to receive him, although made only once, I must affirm in thousands of ways, through thousands of choices, for the rest of my life--my will or His, my life (my old one) or His (the new one). It is no to myself and yes to Him. This continual affirmation is usually made in small things, inconveniences, unselfish giving up of preferences, yielding gracefully to the wishes of others without playing the martyr, learning how to close doors quietly and turn the volume down on the music we'd love to play loudly--sufferings they may be, but only small-sized ones.

...Not a moment's reversal of the decision. A steady carrying out of her purpose to live as a Christian. It didn't happen in an instant. It wasn't the last crisis she'd face. It was one thing God had shown her had to change and with His help she changed it. The self-life--doing her own thing--had to go. She could not do it by herself, but she could will to do it, and she could pray. She asked for God's help and she got it. Grace enables us to do what we can't do.

...If Terri had tried to change all by herself she would have experienced frustration. But it would have been needless pain. Instead, she carried the situation to God.

Pride is at the root of all sins, and it is pride that often keeps us from carrying things to God in prayer. We imagine we can handle things quite well on our own, or we fear that God is likely to tell us to do something we don't want to do. (He is likely to do that, as He did in Terri's case, because He loves us.) The whole Christian life is a process of bringing the self-life down to death in order that the life of Jesus may be manifest in us. "As he grows greater, I must grow less," said John the Baptist (John 3:30).

The process of pruning

Was it not work given by God in the first place, then given back to Him day by day? Jesus said God is the Gardener, the One who takes care of the vines. The hand of the Gardener holds the knife. It is His glory that is at stake when the best grapes are produced, so we need not think He has something personal against us, or has left us wholly to the mercy of His enemy Satan. He is always and forever for us.

So we let go our hold of things we held very dear. Things that once were counted as gain we now count as loss, and out of what seems emptiness come beauty and richness.

To "abide in the Vine" is to live our lives in Christ, living each event--a mother's wise refusal of a teenager's desire, or a life's work going up in flames--as Christ lived, in the peace of the Father's will. Did the earthly life of our Lord appear to be at thundering success? Would the statistics of souls won, crowds made into faithful disciples, sermons heeded, commands obeyed, be impressive? Hardly. In the end they all forsake Him and fled. Yet Peter, one who miserably denied him at the last, repented with tears and later saw clearly what had taken place.

There is nothing by which death can hold any of His faithful servants, either. Settle it, once for all--we can never lose what we have offered to Christ. We live and die in Him, and there is always the resurrection.

"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24). When, by my own faults and indifference, or the distractions of the world, I have drifted from this changeless principle (and imagined that I might avoid the deaths and still somehow be fruitful) the words have rung again in the ears of my soul, if it die, if it die, if it die.

from A Path Through Suffering by Elisabeth Elliot