The more we experience the love of God the more we want to. He is a loving and lovely person and to be involved with Him is to want more.  Jesus said that eternal life is knowing the Father and Jesus in a personal way. (John 17:3)  That means eternal life can start now.  For me, the best part of eternal life in the now is the delight of enjoying His companionship through the day. 

We can know that Jesus is God manifested in flesh and blood like us, but not really understand how to walk with Him.  We can understand that part of His purpose was to remove, in His physical death, all the obstacles that could ever get in the way of an open and loving relationship between God and man, but not experience the full manifestation of that relationship.

The background stories that I have heard of the huge variety of Christians on this earth shows me that there are many roads to Jesus. But Jesus is the only way to the Father and to a relationship with Him. The only way to stay on this way is to walk out a life journey of humble openness to Him. In my experience that does not look like a yielded life at first, because we are still learning to trust Him. The important thing to remember is that it is His love that brings us to Him and pursuing His love is a key to a fulfilling relationship with Him.

This article is part of a group of articles on this website about Kingdom of God foundations - Baptism in water, Understanding repentance and Living after the Spirit are others.

Do you want to really deeply know Jesus?

To know Him deeply we need to let go of our heart walls and yield to Him.  That doesn't mean dropping your walls toward the world, just the ones that hold Jesus away.  You may be asking "How do we yield to Him? What is the active part of this?"  Yielding is a gift that needs our cooperation. God gives us the grace to yield to Him and to receive this gift we let go all that we want (our agendas, desires, religious ways) and put our attention onto the best picture we have of Jesus, asking Him to reveal Himself and become more active in our life. As we do this, He gives Life and all the answers that we need and could ever want, because He is loving, gentle, kind and generous. This is an everyday walk, not just something that happens on a Sunday or at a meeting.

We cannot know or receive Jesus loving kindness until we yield to Him.  Why?  Because, unfortunately, we are not naturally kind, gentle and loving people like He is.  This means we would either have to work hard to be like Him (which is impossible) or let Jesus Himself work through us, putting His attitudes, thoughts and motivations in our hearts and working these through us.  He simply will not share Himself with someone who is not yielded to Him, because He yields His love more in return.  It must be a two way relationship to be fair to Him.  Matthew 5:1-8.

Jesus started the process by laying down His life on the cross in our place as a gift to us, so that we could receive Him and live with Him.  Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends  John 15:12-17 Doing what Jesus asks requires yielding or letting go what we want as He asks it because what He asks is often opposite to what we would naturally do.  As a result of this yielding, we become His friends. John 15:14 You are my friends if you do what I ask of you.  Some results of living in an obedient and attentive relationship with Jesus are listed in Matthew 5 .  So the attributes of verses 1 - 8 are really the fruits of relationship, because they are characteristics of God Himself that become infused in our heart attitudes as we relate with Him.

Realising that this life of our own is not worth living without Him helps us to let go our desires and our agendas.  Beside Jesus and His empowering presence on the inside of us, life is nothing but a set of rules in a cruel and vicious world of selfish people, who want to take everything from us giving nothing in return.  When we look at them, every world Religion boils down to a set of rules or ”ethics”.  Many of them are numerous, complicated and/or ritualistic, some are impossible to keep. Most of these rules ethics are rarely kept and followed successfully.

Living life with Jesus is more and more about not needing rules or laws because His life inside us causes us to actually and naturally want to live in ways that don’t need laws.  We talk about this more in "New creature and old", the fourth article in this series.

Part 1 - Entry into Kingdom Life

Receiving Him is part of yielding to Him.  John 1:12   But to those who did receive Him He granted authority to become God’s children, that is, to those who believe in His name.

In John 15 according to the analogy Jesus used, we must yield to His influence for us to be placed as a branch on His vine, and allow His life flow through us to produce fruit.

Heartfelt belief has an important part in entering a family relationship with God.  Without at least some belief in who He really is and what that means, connection with Him is shaky and yielding to Him is incomplete.  Mentally deciding to follow Jesus is the beginning but for the journey with Him to truly begin, we must also believe with our hearts!  He can help with that.

In many instances, a simple acceptance of something about who Jesus is (or perhaps what He has done for you) will open the door for Him to fill your heart with faith, making it possible for you to yield to Him for the first time.  But TOTAL yielding to His Lordship comes more from a heart based response to Him, as opposed to a solely mental decision.

John  6:29   Jesus said, "This is God's work, that you believe in Him whom He sent."
John  3:16   "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only physically born Son, that whoever believes in him should not be lost, but have everlasting life."

So what is it that He is saying we believe in this passage in John 3 ?  Let us look into the passage to see what Jesus is saying about beliefs.

Three beliefs for Life

John 3:14-16   In this passage, which is part of Jesus talk with Nicodemus, He is declaring three beliefs needed to walk in His Life in a connected way.

1) John  3:13   no man has ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven Believe that Jesus was God in flesh coexisting in heaven and earth at the same time.  So do you and I now.  Believe that this is because He lives inside each of us, in His fullness, just as He lives in heaven. 

2) John  3:14  And as Moses lifted up the (bronze) serpent (on a pole) in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up In those days Moses set up the serpent statue on a pole in the middle of the camp as a symbol of the sin that was killing the people, and just to look at the bronze serpent was to be healed.  Jesus is teaching that just as they looked to the statue of the serpent to be healed, so we can look at Him lifted up on the crucifixion pole, see that He took our place, and gave us His place before God and His righteousness to stand in and be healed.  Belief that every time the serpent of sin bites us, we can look at Jesus and be 'healed'.

3) John  3:16   For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son  When we understand that God has always had plans for a family, then we can believe in the love of our Father, to not only desire to be Family with us, but that He pours out Grace to us as He makes a way for the family He has always wanted.  That His love is so great that God came into the world in the person of the only begotten (physically born) son to make a way for us that cannot be closed.  Belief that the Love of God for you is so great that He came in the person of Jesus to remove all obstacles preventing relationship between Him and you.

Is belief without yielding enough?  In James 2:19 we see that the devils believe and tremble.  They certainly believe but they never yield to Jesus Lordship until they are overpowered.  So, unfortunately belief without yielding is not enough.  But, when we are struggling, we can ask Him for believing, yielding hearts, outside of our own abilities.  I have found that mostly he is waiting to help, waiting to be asked.

If we are to truly yield our lives to Jesus, we need to have some idea of who we are yielding to.  His intention is that we grow to really know Him (this is very different to knowing about Him) John 10:14  I am the Good Shepherd, and I know those that are Mine, and I am known by those who are Mine.

Who is Jesus that we are yielding to?  In Isaiah 9:6   He is called wonderful, counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace. This is a very large description of Him, identifying in Jesus all the aspects of God.

What else is He?  If you would like to, it might be helpful to take a piece of paper and list all that you know and can find in scripture.   

If this is who He is, then what does that make you in Him and Him in you?  Here are some of my beliefs and where I find them in scripture.

1John  4:17   In this is our love made complete, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that as He is, so also we are in this world.

My righteousness    Matt 6:33, 1Peter 2:24

My health              Isaiah 53:6, 1Peter 2:24  

My prosperity         Isaiah 55:11, 3John 2

My resurrection      John 11:25, Romans 6:5

He is also love, faith, graciousness, humbleness, joy, mercifulness, peacefulness in us etc.

Putting this into practise

We begin to exist more in Him instead of the world and this happens as we yield to Him (receive Him) and dare to believe this is who we are.  John 15:4,5   Abide in Me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.  I am the Vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

We can also see the kind of oneness with us that God desires in Jesus' prayer in John 17:9-26 and I have found that believing this helps my heart to stay yielded to Him.

The Holy Spirit works with us to bring us into yieldedness as shown in John 16:7-11 where He speaks into our hearts which produces the conviction in us that we need to yield.

Some Christians are a bit confused over the difference between conviction and self-condemnation.  

Conviction results in purpose (and can be sorrowful purpose), and desire for a change of heart and direction in life and ultimately brings us to God to fix what He is showing us is wrong in our lives.  

Self condemnation results in us beating ourselves up and is never of God because it makes us want to run away from Him, and He would never want that.  If we run away from the only Person who has power to help, then how can we ever be changed?

Part 2 - Ongoing Yieldedness

Yieldedness and spiritual growth go hand in hand.  In order to grow, we must grow closer to Jesus, and yield all aspects of our lives to Him to let Him flow.  

John 7:37-39:  In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.  He that believes on me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 

Yieldedness is not only a foundation to be activated spiritually and become a Child of God, but it is a foundation to Grow.  Our heavenly Father continues to ask our permission to change what is written in our hearts (which we give in yielding) so that He can build more 'spiritual muscle' in us.

This gets easier as we continue to give some heart focus towards who He is and letting Him flow through us.  It is possible to do this while we are engaged in every day tasks because it is an attitude of heart.  

It can also feel like having living water washing through us.  One reason this is important is that the flow through us of who He is allows Him to impact and change the world around us.  It just happens naturally and its wonderful.  However we can shut Him off by our choices and by our involvements.  

When you realise you have made a shutting off choice, you can just change it.  Refuse to dwell on the mistaken choice, just refocus on Him and restart the flow.  If you realise that the thoughts in your mind are not godly then you can start thinking about Him again and how wonderful He is.  

1 John 1:7:   But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have true connected fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.

As we walk through the levels of yielding to Him that we already know, the realisation that Jesus is there on the inside grows, and knowing Him better comes through more revelation. As we continue to do this we are able to yield more to Him and grow into more of Him in our daily lives.

As members of His Family, we are all going through some internal processing and changes as the result of our continued yielding to Him. He is changing us and filling holes in our foundations or beliefs. He is helping us to battle the fears and struggles to fully believe and trust in Him. We are also learning to totally yield to His lordship and to understand what it means to do so.