We will never understand how to abandon ourselves to God until we understand how God abandoned himself to us. When God gave his Son in love to the world, he didn’t give just a part of himself. He gave all of himself, absolutely and entirely. He gave with total abandon, holding nothing back. We must beware of talking about abandonment if we don’t really know about it, and we won’t know—not until we realize the full meaning of John 3:16.
That God gave with total abandon is the very essence of salvation. Salvation isn’t merely deliverance from sin or the experience of personal holiness. Salvation is deliverance out of self and into union with God. What I experience of salvation may be a sense of personal holiness, but what salvation actually means is that the Spirit of God has brought me into contact with God himself. I am thrilled by the contact with something infinitely greater than myself, and I wonder how it is possible. It is possible because God has given himself completely for our sake.
Abandonment is never self-conscious. If we are abandoned to God, our whole life is his. There is no awareness of striving to let go, no struggling to abandon. We aren’t torn between our old life and our new. We are simply given over to our Lord. Our entire existence is wrapped up in him, and the consequences of abandoning ourselves never enter into our thinking.
