Into Your Hands

No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it. So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. (Ecclesiastes 8:16, 9:1)

The Lord will perfect that which concerns me: your mercy, O Lord, endures forever: forsake not the works of your own hands. (Psalm 138:8)

Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in trouble: my eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my body...I am like a broken vessel...But I trusted in you, O Lord: I said, you are my God. My times are in your hand...save me for your mercies' sake. Let me not be ashamed, O Lord; for I have called upon you...Oh how great is your goodness, which you have laid up for them that fear you; which you have wrought for them that trust in you before the sons of men! You shall hide them in the secret of your presence from the pride of man...For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before your eyes: nevertheless you heard the voice of my supplications when I cried unto you. (Psalm 31:9, 12, 14-17, 19, 20, 22)

When the devil comes with His subtle questions and insinuations, refer Him to your Lord, in whose hands your times are placed. When you have a lawsuit, the opposite side will likely come and talk with you, to see if they can get something out of you. It will be your wisdom to reply, “If you have anything to say, say it to my solicitor.” If the devil comes to you and you get into an argument with him, he will beat you, for he is a very ancient lawyer and he has been at the business for so many ages that you cannot match him. Send him to your Advocate! Refer him to the Wonderful, the Counselor! Always shelter beneath this fact, “My times are in His hand. I have left the whole business to Another and I cannot dishonor Him by meddling.” Satan knows the Christ too well to go to Him—he knows the taste of His broadsword, of, “It is written.” He will not contest with Jesus if we leave Him to plead the causes of our soul! (C. H. Spurgeon)

Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment. (John 12:3)

I cannot, like Mary, touch You, Lord Jesus, but accept these tears as my ointment poured out. You alone know the cost. I fall at Your feet. Lovely feet, pierced for me. How can I doubt You?

"At any cost, by any road" means nothing self-chosen in the way God brings us to the goal.
There is no possibility of questioning God when He speaks, if He speaks to His own nature in me. Prompt obedience is the only result. When Jesus says, "Come," I simply come; when He says, "Let go," I let go; when He says, "Trust God in this matter," I trust. This work of obedience is the evidence that the nature of God is in me....
It is through the discipline of obedience that I get to the place where Abraham was and I see who God is. God will never be real to me until I come face to face with Him in Jesus Christ. Then I will know and can boldly proclaim,

"In all the world, my God, there is none but Thee, there is none but Thee."

(Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 17)

Jesus Christ will not help me to obey Him, I must obey Him; and when I do obey Him, I fulfil my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small petty incidents, altogether unnoticeable and mean; but if I obey Jesus Christ in the haphazard circumstances, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God, and when I stand face to face with God I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When once God's Redemption comes to the point of obedience in a human soul, it always creates. If I obey Jesus Christ, the Redemption of God will rush through me to other lives, because behind the deed of obedience is the Reality of Almighty God. (Oswald Chambers)

"Rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." 1 Peter 4:13
The sufferings of Christ are not those of ordinary men. He suffered "according to the will of God," not from the point of view we suffer from as individuals. It is only when we are related to Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God's aim is. In the history of the Christian Church the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; men have sought to procure the carrying out of God's order by a short cut of their own. God's way is always the way of suffering, the way of the "long, long trail."
Are we partakers of Christ's sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp our personal ambitions right out? Are we prepared for God to destroy by transfiguration our individual determinations? It will not mean that we know exactly why God is taking us that way, that would make us spiritual prigs. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through; we go through it more or less misunderstandingly; then we come to a luminous place, and say - "Why, God has girded me, though I did not know it!" (Oswald Chambers)

Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.

For it's only in Your will that I am free,
For it's only in Your will that I am free,
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.

I bend to You, Lover of my soul. Break me in shards, as You will, and heal me because of Your mercy. Take my yesterday and my today and my tomorrow. Spend them all on what those who count things call "waste". I am all Yours. All Yours.