0417 完全成功或彻底失败？
…西门彼得赤着身子，一听见是主，就束上一件外衣，跳在海里。 《约翰福音 21:7》
你生命中是否曾有过一次危机，你刻意、认真、不顾一切地放弃所有？那是一场意志的危机。你可能外在地多次达到这一点，但那将是毫无意义。舍弃或完全投降的真正深层危机是内在而非外在可达。仅仅放弃外在事物实际上可能表明你完全是被捆绑中。
你是否刻意将自己的意志交托忠于耶稣基督？这是意志的交易，而不是感情的交易；所产生的任何积极情感都只是交易产物的表面祝福。如果你把注意力集中在情感上，你永远不会完成交易。不要问神交易的后果会是什么，但要下定决心，关乎所看到的一切，你都要将你的意志降服，无论是在内心表面或深处。
如果你在海浪中听到了耶稣基督的声音，你可以借着集中注意力维持与祂的亲密关系，信任你的信念和一惯性态度的引导【继续乘风破浪前行，无需过多担心】。
来自章伯斯的智慧
我们不是根本上的自由；外在境遇不在我们手中，而是在神的手中，我们唯一的自由是在于我们与神的个人关系。我们不为所处的环境负责，但我们要为允许这些环境如何影响我们而负责；我们可以让它们压倒我们，或让它们改变我们成为神要我们所是的人。《改变像祂的样式》
0417 All or Nothing?
When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment…and plunged into the sea. —John 21:7
Have you ever had a crisis in your life in which you deliberately, earnestly, and recklessly abandoned everything? It is a crisis of the will. You may come to that point many times externally, but it will amount to nothing. The true deep crisis of abandonment, or total surrender, is reached internally, not externally. The giving up of only external things may actually be an indication of your being in total bondage.
Have you deliberately committed your will to Jesus Christ? It is a transaction of the will, not of emotion; any positive emotion that results is simply a superficial blessing arising out of the transaction. If you focus your attention on the emotion, you will never make the transaction. Do not ask God what the transaction is to be, but make the determination to surrender your will regarding whatever you see, whether it is in the shallow or the deep, profound places internally.
If you have heard Jesus Christ’s voice on the waves of the sea, you can let your convictions and your consistency take care of themselves by concentrating on maintaining your intimate relationship to Him.
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
We are not fundamentally free; external circumstances are not in our hands, they are in God’s hands, the one thing in which we are free is in our personal relationship to God. We are not responsible for the circumstances we are in, but we are responsible for the way we allow those circumstances to affect us; we can either allow them to get on top of us, or we can allow them to transform us into what God wants us to be. –Conformed to His Image, 354 L