Yield

You must yield the right of way when someone has a green light, and you get the red which indicates, you must stop, and wait. You must yield the right of way, when a bus driver signals they want into the lane you are travelling, and when lights flash, and a STOP sign extends out from below the drivers window, letting you know children are leaving the bus to cross the street. Yielding the right of way makes sense, if life is to be preserved, if common decency is valued as a human trait to be admired and adhered to: yielding gives others a right of passage, and when someone takes the liberty of stealing a turn, everyone around them, potentially, suffers loss. 

Does God have the right of way in your life, dear reader? Do you accept his signals of stop, wait, proceed with caution, look before you leap, heed warnings and heed too, the discernment that instructs next steps? Alternatively, do you rush ahead without considering outcomes, impact, perhaps even devastation for yourself and others, because you just can't wait, or more accurately, you refuse to wait, believing that later, is too late for you? 

Yielding to others is a curtesy extended, and when others yield to us, we receive the gift of kind consideration. Yielding is a vulnerable experience; it may feel like risk taking without the promise of reciprocal rewards. Letting someone into a stream of traffic feels good, but letting in five people in a row is problematic, for everyone behind us. Yield must not be misunderstood: we yield the right of way whenever and wherever we can, without violating everyone's, including our, rights. 

I dance around a truth as I type. I have known some truly lovely people that I wish I could actually love. They have great traits and can be adorable, and yet, they appear to be incapable of the vulnerability required to truly be intimate in relationship. For closeness to happen, each individual must be willing to listen, to actually hear, and attempt to truly understand, others, and to share their own thoughts, fears, worries, hopes, dreams, heartaches, and happiness. The give and take of relating can be soulfully edifying, and freeing too; but the unyielding refuse to give of themselves this way, and this resistance, invariably, acts as repellant to the people that would love, to love them. 

God loves. It astounds me how much he loves and how he loves. To not yield to his way is a hazard to health and home. If anything makes us vulnerable to danger and demonic encroachment, it is resisting God's will, and his loving ways. Demonic encroachment, dear reader, happens when we take the liberty of green lighting our own desires, no matter how dark and dreadful, without regard for the will and wishes, and well-being, of others. Demons encroach and next, they enter in, when we yield to wicked ways, neglecting and rejecting, God's commands. 

And this is his greatest command to all people: 

Matthew 22:37-39

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy mind. 

This is the first and great commandment. 

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 

Feel and think with me, how outstandingly marvellous it would be, if we lived the first and great commandment, followed closely by the second? God commands us to love, and yet being loving, does not feel like taking an order! What a dynamic wonder this is to contemplate, loving God, ourselves, and others, without hesitation, or fear of loss. 

Man alive, this is so outstanding, that it is crazy making to think people will not yield to this command. Knowing God and his will is an empowering experience, a heart softening experience, a soul soaring experience. It is easy to yield to God, when he is known as Abba Father, merciful and gracious, forever willing to forgive when we repent. When we don't get how good we have it, and then finally come to realize how generous he has been, it is heart rending to acknowledge what ingrates we have been!

I do not want to be an ingrate, dear reader. I do not want to be a little schmuck that does not yield to God Almighty, as though he does not have the right of way in my life. 

What about you? 

What is happening in your head and in your heart?

Are you ready to yield to the One that has your best interests in mind?

Are you ready, to give your all, to the One that gave you, everything? 

Are you, ready, to yield to the King of kings, and Lord of lords, the Alpha, Omega, beginning and end? 

Are you ready to love, like God loves you?