Are you available?

What does this question conjur up in your mind?  Openness…receptiveness?

If you were asked this question, in a social context, you might think the person was making a pass or coming on to you in some way.  The dictionary describes it as “being present and ready for use” and “qualified and willing to be of service“  

Are you present each day to the needs of your family?  Are you willing to be of service to the friend that is struggling?  If I were to ask you the same question in context to your relationship with Jesus, would that change your perspective at all?  Do you find yourself present to Him each day…ready and willing to be used?

The latest book to grace my nightstand is from counsellor and author Dan Allender who writes…

 “There is a door to every heart and every experience in life is either invited in or turned away…we hear the knock, or we ignore the noise and turn our attention more deliberately to other stimuli.  The decision to hear the knock and open the door is a stance that determines how much we are willing to change and grow.”   

Over the past year plus, I have been confronted with a host of long-standing sin patterns and I have reached the point of asking the Lord…so, why now?  Why not 10 or 15 years ago?  Is it that God wasnt ready to put these things in front of me or was it more that I was not truly available to Him until the past two years?  It is certainly no coincidence that, as I have grown in intimacy with the Lord, I have been both wooed and disciplined in the most extravagant ways.

Recently, I have been chewing on Paul’s statement that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”.  It’s a mind-bending statement that I have glossed over for years in my reading of the Scriptures.  However, I do not think Paul is waxing philosophic here but is, in a very real sense, telling us that we no longer have a right to our lives and that as we submit to the indwelling Spirit, we see the fruit of His life being expressed in us including the death of ingrained habits and sinful thought patterns that have plagued us for years.

As Allender writes, “..stepping on to the healing path is both a choice and a mystery…and God meets our desire with His presence and then dances with us - but only as wildly as we wish…many moments in life, we simply dont want to dance or choose not to make ourselves available”

So much of our walk with Jesus boils down to the decisions we make…a choice to carve out intentional time for reflection, study and self-examination or to induldge our flesh in its craving for food, alcohol, mind-numbing hours of television or work.  In other words, do I make myself available to God to hear his voice, reflect on his counsel and relax in his company.

Paul tells us in Col 3 (the Message), “So if you are serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it.  Pursue the things over which Christ presides.  Dont shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with things right in front of you.  Look up and be alert to what is going on around Christ – that’s where the action is.  See things from his perspective.  Your old life is dead – your new life, which is your real life – is with Christ in God”

So… I find myself this day as I do so many others, making myself available to my Father.  How about you?