Willing to Be Made Willing

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. ROMANS 12:1

Every movement has its keyword, and the keyword of the Keswick Convention, where Meyer spoke for so many years, was consecration. It meant the definite handing over of the whole self to Christ as Lord: not merely trusting Him for pardon, but giving Him the house and all its keys. Meyer had come to it himself in Leicester, and he never stopped pressing it on others. In The Secret of Guidance he puts it plainly: “Consecration is the indispensable condition of blessedness.”

Saviour and King

Meyer’s diagnosis of the ordinary Christian’s trouble was that we have accepted half of Christ. “We are willing enough to take Him as Savior; we hesitate to make Him King.” We are glad to be forgiven, and we mean to be good, but the direction of our lives we keep in our own hands. So we live on a low level, and wonder why.

Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. ACTS 5:31

He had an illustration for it that suited his century. Put the sun at the centre, he says, and all the planets move in order; put Jesus on the throne of the life, and everything falls into harmony and peace. The trouble with most of us is not that we have no Christ, but that He is not at the centre. He is one planet among many, and our days go round something else.

Not making, but recognising

It would be easy to hear this as a demand to do something heroic, and Meyer was careful to say it is not. In Our Daily Walk he writes that “In consecration we do not make ourselves Christ’s but recognize that we are His by an unalienable right.” The foundation is the price He paid. We were bought, and the purchase stands whether we acknowledge it or not. Consecration is simply saying yes to what is already true.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. 1 CORINTHIANS 6:19–20

This matters because it takes the strain out of the thing. The anxious Christian keeps offering himself again and again, never sure the offering has been received. Meyer had an answer for him in his chapter on fact, faith and feeling: “It is a fact that God takes what we give, and as soon as we give it.” There is no waiting period. When we let go, He receives. To keep giving what has already been taken only burdens us with needless anxiety.

The bored ear

In The Way Into the Holiest Meyer found the most beautiful picture of consecration in an old Hebrew law. A poor Israelite might sell himself into service to pay his debts, and at the end of six years he went out free. But if he loved his master and did not want to leave, he could say so before the judges, and his master would bore his ear with an awl against the doorpost, and he would serve him for ever.

And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever. EXODUS 21:5–6

Meyer loved this. It meant that consecration is not a slave’s surrender but a lover’s choice. The servant was free to go and chose to stay. The psalmist took up the custom — mine ears hast thou opened, I delight to do thy will — and the writer to the Hebrews heard in it the voice of Christ Himself, who gave not an ear only but His whole body to the Father’s will. And Meyer heard in it the call to every Christian: we love our Master, we will not go out free.

I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. PSALM 40:8

He drew a paradox from it that he had proved for himself. In Our Daily Walk he recalls the day he first entered into the realisation that he belonged to his Lord and had no more choice of his own, and says that the life which began then had been one of perfect freedom. “Christ’s slaves are alone free.”

Specific, not general

Meyer’s counsel on how to consecrate oneself is refreshingly practical. “Do not be general, but specific in your consecration,” he writes. A vague giving of everything can give nothing in particular. The key that is kept back is always a particular key: a habit, a friendship, an ambition, a grudge, a plan for the future. The surrender that matters is the one that names it.

He also gave advice for those who find the giving up too hard. Do not dwell on the giving-up side, he says in The Way Into the Holiest, but on the receiving side. The old Hebrew word for consecration means to fill the hand. A child will drop its toy when it sees the dove flying towards its empty hands. Christians let go of lesser things more easily when they see what Christ is offering in their place.

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. PHILIPPIANS 3:7

And for those who cannot even will it, there is the prayer he learned in Leicester. If you cannot give, he says, let Him take; if you are not willing, confess that you are willing to be made willing. God does not wait for our surrender to be perfect before He accepts it. He takes the key from a trembling hand.

Reading him with care

Here the honest reader must pause. Keswick teaching, Meyer’s included, often spoke as though consecration were a second, decisive crisis after conversion, dividing Christians into those who had made it and those who had not. Many have been helped by a definite moment of surrender, as Meyer was. But the New Testament does not number the steps like that, and some tender consciences have spent years wondering whether their surrender was complete enough to count.

It is worth noticing that Meyer himself offered the best correction. In the same chapter of The Way Into the Holiest that holds the bored ear, he laid down three rules for the movement of which he was a part. It must be natural, not shut away from ordinary life and little children. It must be humble; he warns that the tone in which some speak of perfection shows how far they are from it. And it must fix its gaze on the objective work of Christ, not on endless self-examination. Those three rules would have spared the movement much grief, and they will spare the reader too. Surrender is not a badge. It is a daily yes to a Master we love.

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s. ROMANS 14:7–8

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask honestly whether Christ is King of your life or only its Saviour. Where is the throne?

2. Name the particular key you are keeping back. Write it down. Be specific, not general.

3. If you cannot yet give it, pray Meyer’s prayer: that you are willing to be made willing.

4. Once you have given something to God, stop offering it again. Thank Him that He has taken it.

5. Look at the receiving side. Write down what Christ offers you in place of what you are letting go.

6. Test your own consecration by Meyer’s three rules: is it natural, humble, and fixed on Christ rather than on yourself?

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, I have been glad to have You as my Saviour and slow to have You as my King.

I am Yours already, bought with Your blood. I do not make myself Yours; I only say yes to what is true.

Here is the key I have kept back. If I cannot give it, take it. If I am not willing, make me willing.

Bore my ear to Your door. I love my Master, and I will not go out free. Amen.