defined to the dandelion globe:
it is marked by detachment. There is no sense of wrenching: it stands
ready, holding up its little life, not knowing when or where or how
the wind that bloweth where it listeth may carry it away. It holds
itself no longer for its own keeping, only as something to be given:
a breath does the rest, turning the "readiness to will" into the
"performance." (2 Cor. 8. 11.) And to a soul that through "deaths
oft" has been brought to this point, even acts that look as if they
must involve an effort, become something natural, spontaneous, full
of a "heavenly involuntariness," so simply are they the outcome of
the indwelling love of Christ.

Shall we not ask God to convict us, as to where lies the hindrance to
this self-emptying? It is not alone mere selfishness, in its ordinary
sense, that prevents it; long after this has been cleansed away by
the Precious Blood there may remain, unrecognised, the self-life in
more subtle forms. It may co-exist with much that looks like
sacrifice; there may be much of usefulness and of outward
self-denial, and yet below the surface may remain a clinging to our
own judgment, a confidence in our own resources, an unconscious
taking of our own way, even in God's service. And these things hold
down, hold in our souls, and frustrate the Spirit in His working. The
latent self-life needs to be brought down into the place of death
before His breath can carry us hither and thither as the wind wafts
the seeds. Are we ready for this last surrender?

Do you ask "Does God really mean the emptying to reach so far as
this?" Study the inner life of Jesus. "I speak not of Myself" He
says. "I can of Mine own self do nothing." "I seek not Mine own will,
but the will of Him that sent Me." His human self-life, sinless
though it was, was laid down that He might live by the Father, and
our self-life, defiled and worthless, shall we not lay it down that
we may live by Him?

But how? Again not by struggling and wrestling, but by dying to it in
Jesus. "I am crucified with Christ"--I myself in the very essence of
my being, I let myself go to that death, and by the mysterious power
with which God meets faith, I find that He has made it true: the
bonds are loosed and He can have His way with me.

See in these wild iris-pods how the last tiny threads must be broken,
and with that loosing, all that they have is free for God's use in
His world around. All reluctance, all calculating, all ho