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Moving From My Commitment to Jesus’s Consecration

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you. 

Jesus, We belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Romans 6:19–23 (NIV)

I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

CONSIDER THIS

I have a friend who recently told me of her daily practice of consecration. Immediately upon waking in the morning she kneels beside her bed and draws into fellowship with Jesus. It’s a good picture of, “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” It’s like she is saying, “I will let neither darkness nor daylight come between the devotion of Jesus and my desperate soul.” It’s become her reflexive movement of the morning: Rise up. Kneel down. 

Did you catch that? Yes, I said the devotion of Jesus; not our devotion to Jesus—but Jesus’s devotion to us. The gospel is not if we turn our lives around God will love us. It is “while we were still sinners Jesus died for us.” I mean, what do we think we mean when we say Jesus loves us? It means he is devoted to us. It means he is waiting on us to wake up, . . . every single morning . . . so he can shine his light in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in his very face.1

When Paul says things like, 

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11);

and, 

so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. (Romans 6:19);

He is assuming we understand the exceptional and extraordinary message of the gospel that Jesus Christ has unconditionally and unalterably given himself to us in love. If we don’t understand this, we will mistakenly interpret this as, “Be more committed to trying harder to be better,” and we will fail over and over again and ultimately settle into a life of predictable sin management. 

The invitation is to respond by giving ourselves to him; to belong to him wholeheartedly and unreservedly in love. This is a once and for all giving over of ourselves to Jesus and yet the real proof of whether we have really once and for all done it comes in the everyday-ness of doing it. Rise up. Kneel down. 

It’s why we enter into this prayer of consecration every single day here. 

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you. 

Jesus, We belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.2

(It’s another reason I would love for you to start listening to the Wake-Up Call. It helps us all to better “go there” together and of course, we sing together at the end!) 

Jesus is jealous for us—in a very good way. He knows what happens when we slide off into the abyss of sin and death. He covets life and more life for us, but we must belong to him and abide in him to receive it. Note Paul’s reasoning: 

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!

Jesus is all about giving us a quality of life and love that is not originating in our commitment and willpower. It is streaming by the Spirit from his very life in us. “Rivers of living water will flow from within you,” is how he put it. (See John 7:38)

Consecration is participation in the divine-human intermingled exchange who is Jesus himself. He gives his heart to us. He gives his mind to us. His eyes are fixed on us. He gave and gives his body for us as a holy and living sacrifice. Consecration is the mysterious, miraculous exchange of our sin for his righteousness, our brokenness for his wholeness, and our emptiness for his fullness. Through consecration, we learn to participate in the very life of Jesus—by the indwelling Holy Spirit—on earth as it is in heaven. 

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.3

A final word—eternal life does not mean, “when we all get to heaven.” It means heaven is now here. Eternal signifies not only duration but quality. Eternal life is life in quantity and quality. 

THE PRAYER

Jesus, all of this. I want all of this, and yet it all comes down to me wanting you. All of this comes with you. Would you teach me and train me in this life? Would you let that become what discipleship means in my life; even in my church? I am weary of my own ways of trying harder to manage sin. Come Holy Spirit! I am ready for consecration, the exchange of all that is broken for all that is whole. I am ready to participate in your life here and now, for my good, for others’ gain, for God’s glory. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen. 

THE QUESTION

Do you feel drawn to the kind of life described in today’s Wake-Up Call? How might you take steps toward this life? This is a visionary life—are you seeing it? What might walking into it look like? Right now? Tomorrow morning? 

THE HYMN

Today we will finish the festival on “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” We will sing all six verses as we have never sung them before. We have a lot to sing about, don’t we?!  It is hymn 279 in our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. Let’s go big today! 

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt

Notes for Further Study and Reflection

  1. I am referencing  2 Corinthians 4:6 here:
    For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
    Watch how it flows into verse 7:
    But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
    And I point you to the larger context which is 2 Corinthians 3:12 to the end of chapter 4. This transformative text is worthy of your long and close attention. 
  2. I have a hunch that many readers now skip right over the prayer of consecration to get to the text and the entry for the day. I know you don’t, but I suspect many do. Please, please, please, spend time with this prayer. It will not only change the character of the Wake-Up Call every day, but it will also change your life. It’s why I would love for you to begin listening to the recording each day. We actually spend time there entering into this prayer of consecration together. 
  3. It’s fascinating how today’s text begins with Paul telling us he is using an example “from everyday life,” by which of course he refers to slavery. While slavery remains common in many parts of the world, it is not a part of the average Wake-Up Call reader’s everyday life. The slavery analogy, while certainly making the point, can be difficult for many to engage in for a lot of reasons. Nevertheless, it is what it is. Because it is included in the Word of God it is worthy of deep reflection and engagement (potential insensitivity notwithstanding). 

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WHAT IS THIS? Wake-Up Call is a daily encouragement to shake off the slumber of our busy lives and turn our eyes toward Jesus. Each morning our community gathers around a Scripture, a reflection, a prayer, and a few short questions, inviting us to reorient our lives around the love of Jesus that transforms our hearts, homes, churches, and cities.

Comments and Discussion

3 Responses

  1. Jesus is the VINE. We are formerly dead branches that have been grafted into Him. In order to live, grow and mature into fruitful branches, we must remain firmly attached to the VINE. He, alone, is the source of our life, strength, holiness and righteousness. We are mere conduits of His life, love, mercy and grace. Apart from Him, we remain dead, nonproductive wood. Remaining in Him permits us to participate in the divine nature, Theosis, divination (2Peter 1:3-4), to fully reflect the restored image of our Creator.

  2. When Bob spoke of Jesus the Vine and us the branches it took me back long ago when JD spoke of abiding in the Vine. I will never forget(and my memory is not as good as it used to be) the 4 A’s to abide.
    Always be…
    *Aware of His presence
    *Attentive to His Word
    *Attuned to His voice
    *ATTACHED to His heart!!

    I instantly was reminded that a baby’s lifeline in the womb is their umbilical cord staying attached to their mother( I won’t describe our Creator’s design in a text!!).
    After their birth the cord is cut and they depend on their “mother’s” daily devotion to them to live and grow. I will let you ponder the rest!!

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