0417 完全成功或徹底失敗？
…西門彼得赤着身子，一聽見是主，就束上一件外衣，跳在海里。 《約翰福音 21:7》
你生命中是否曾有過一次危機，你刻意、認真、不顧一切地放棄所有？那是一場意志的危機。你可能外在地多次達到這一點，但那將是毫無意義。捨棄或完全投降的真正深層危機是內在而非外在可達。僅僅放棄外在事物實際上可能表明你完全是被捆綁中。
你是否刻意將自己的意志交託忠於耶穌基督？這是意志的交易，而不是感情的交易；所產生的任何積極情感都只是交易產物的表面祝福。如果你把注意力集中在情感上，你永遠不會完成交易。不要問神交易的後果會是什麼，但要下定決心，關乎所看到的一切，你都要將你的意志降服，無論是在內心表面或深處。
如果你在海浪中聽到了耶穌基督的聲音，你可以藉着集中注意力維持與祂的親密關係，信任你的信念和一慣性態度的引導【繼續乘風破浪前行，無需過多擔心】。
來自章伯斯的智慧
我們不是根本上的自由；外在境遇不在我們手中，而是在神的手中，我們唯一的自由是在於我們與神的個人關係。我們不為所處的環境負責，但我們要為允許這些環境如何影響我們而負責；我們可以讓它們壓倒我們，或讓它們改變我們成為神要我們所是的人。《改變像祂的樣式》
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