“Everything is Mine in You.” These lyrics from a Christy Nockels song have been rolling around in my head and heart for two weeks. I have everything I need in Christ.
Then why do I often feel so needy? Or empty? Or exhausted? What about all of my wants? Is realizing that all I need is in Christ the answer to my endless desires?
Could it be I am living in my own strength, not asking for the full equipping of the Lord through the Holy Spirit?
I was drawn to I Kings 17 where Elijah was told to go to a widow’s home. This widow was hopeless, going to make her last bit of bread, eat it with her son and die.
That’s pretty hopeless. She was at the end of all she had in order to live. But God had a word for her through Elijah.
In I Kings 17, after Elijah had the audacity to ask for her last bit of bread, she answers him, “As the Lord your God lives, I have no bread, only a handful of flour in the bowl and a little oil in the jar, and behold I am gathering a few sticks that I may go in and prepare for me and my son, that we may eat and die.” Then Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go, do as you have said, but make me a little bread cake from it first and bring it out to me and afterward you may make one for yourself and for your son. For this says the Lord God of Israel, “The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain on the face of the earth.”
So she went and did according to the word of Elijah, and she and he and her household ate for many days. The bowl of flour was not exhausted nor did the jar of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Elijah.
Like that widow, if we give our very little to God, He will not allow us to be exhausted or empty. She had to let go of the little she had…In Christy Nockels’ song, “Everything is Mine in You,” she repeats a line several times…”Pry our fingers from the earthly, Let us love your glory” …so true. Only when we lose our grip on the earthly will we truly embrace what He has for us.
Here are some verses the Lord has brought into my path that underscore the truth that everything is ours in Christ Jesus. All we need for life is in Him alone. We must live with our hands open to give, to love, to surrender to His will and with our hands open to Him, He fills them with all we need.
1Corinthians 3:21-23 “So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.”
2 Peter 1:3 “seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. ”
2 Corinthians 6:10 “as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.”
2 Corinthians 9:8 “And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that always having all sufficiency in everything, you may have an abundance for every good deed. “
Hebrews 13:20-21 “May the God of Peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may He work in us what is pleasing to Him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. ”
Romans 8:31-32 “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?“
These verses in Romans 8 go on to tell us that nothing in all this earth can separate us from the love of Christ. “But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”
Overwhelmingly conquer? Sounds amazing. I think I misunderstand what overwhelmingly conquering really looks like.
G. Campbell Morgan says, “Bearing persecution, we are demonstrating the meaning of true godliness. Suffering hunger, we are proving that man does not live by bread alone. In nakedness, we reveal the beauty of spiritual adorning. Living amid perils, we are revealing the power of our Lord. Dying by the sword, we are demonstrating the weakness of the sword. This is more-than-conquering.”
I want to live a more-than-conquering life where I truly believe that everything is mine in Jesus. I want to live like the widow as she listened to the word of the Lord and surrendered the little she had to Him and then found that she never ran out of what she needed. That kind of life is there for the taking. But we have to open our grip on the earthly to receive it.
