“Jesus, what would you do in my life if I gave you 100% of my margin, if 100% of my life was margin?”
It was something rolling around my head and heart as I stood on the cliff’s edge of leaving NYC four years ago. Lest I sound too self-congratulatory, let me add this proves to me that our desires originate in God, because what sane person would ask that of the all-powerful God of the universe? In hindsight: it was a foolish, dangerous, prideful, ignorant question.
Jesus loved it.
It reminds me of another young person in scripture who made another sweeping declaration:
“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Mark 10:20-21
Like the young ruler, I was sincere in my desire to follow Jesus. In my legalism phase, I was intimidated by passages like this. I used to get hung up on whether or not “everything you have” was meant literally, whether it meant specifically money as some translations render it, what my action step should be… (I’ve heard pastors teach through it as “anything that has you”—any disordered attachment. I think that’s true, but it isn’t what Jesus is saying). The point: I wanted rules to carry out, boxes to check.
Now I know Holy Spirit leads us through His own curriculum of freedom. Rees Howells used this phrase, “Holy Spirit is bringing me up to it,” repeatedly when God was drawing him into a new level or “position” of surrender. God did the same with me. To bring me through, God came much closer, putting His finger on my desire for safety. Many more years into being a disciple of Jesus, conviction fell while reading 1 Timothy 6 and settled the matter. I realized I was, in fact, putting my security in my nice, comfortable job and the jarring, uncomfortable juxtaposition of a few friends living by faith.
I wanted more of God and felt I wasn’t leaving room for Him to work because of the way I was living.
So I left the way I was living.
I’ve since gotten the miracles.
It was just the beginning.
But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had—all she had to live on.”
Mark 12:42-44
It turns out that when Jesus says ‘everything’, He means… everything. The same invitation was extended to the rich young ruler as the poor widow, according to what they had, not according to what they did not have (2 Corinthians 8:12). I underwent a real conversion to kill my flesh regarding wealth. But it turns out that “taking hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19) involves a lot of dying. In His relentless, inexorable mercy, God desires to “lead me into all truth” (John 16:13) and these days I’m finding something more is required of me.
‘All I have’ is now all of my time, all of my energy, all my hopes, elements of who I am and what I feel called to. I’m leading and smaller and smaller life, coinciding with a greater acceptance of what Jesus wants of me (everything, and at the same time, not much) and, consequently, less grandiose expectations of my Kingdom impact. Few of these have gone quietly; many, many tears have been shed. I’m watching the last bit of perfume drip from the raw edge of the jar and getting frantic—it can’t be put back in and I’m wondering what God means to put in its place.
While [Jesus] was in Bethany, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste…?”
“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. She did what she could…”
Mark 9:3-4, 6, 8a
Why this waste? Needless to say, people had comments. Heck, I had comments. At times, when the days stretch before me unfilled and the steps stay shrouded in darkness, the same question flits through my mind (“What is the point?”). Alongside it hovers the old insecurity (“Are You sure I’m doing enough, Lord?”).
I have learned not to listen to it, am noticing instead the kindness of Jesus’ response to Mary. As what I can offer back to God appears to be less and less, He continues to call it beautiful. Worthiness is defined according to His valuation. And as for everything else, every shred of hope and desire I’m not yet willing to fork over, every scrap of margin I still claim for my own, every tiny death I’m yet to die, Holy Spirit will bring me up to.
Fire and Whisper 