This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’” Matthew 3:3
“This above all else is needful: you must lay claim to nothing! Let go of yourself and let God act with you and in you as He will. This work is His, this Word is His, this birth is His, in fact every single thing that you are. For you have abandoned self and have gone out of your (soul’s) powers and their activities, and your personal nature. Therefore God must enter into your being and powers, because you have bereft yourself of all possessions, and become as a desert, as it is written, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Matt. 3:3). Let this eternal voice cry out in you as it listeth, and be as a desert in respect of yourself and all things.”
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328) in “Sermon Three” in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, translated and edited by Maurice O’C. Walshe (New York: Crossroad, 1987) 51-52.
Today I return to my word for the year – needful – in the writings of Meister Eckhart.
I have arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (pictured above) and asking God to prepare my heart for service. I feel him telling me that before I can tell others to make way for the Lord, it is needful for me to do it.
Absolute surrender is needful. It is needful to give God every portion of my being.
All of us can do this. Not just me sitting here in Asia. Before embarking on whatever is happening in your, it is needful to surrender yourself and everything to God.
Jesus, we surrender ourselves to you. Take care of everything. Amen.