AUGUST 2007
The Natural Submissive

Anne Rice, revered in goth for her vampire novels, who recently testified publicly of her faith in Jesus, is also well known for a series based on the tale of Sleeping Beauty. In The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the Prince takes possession of Beauty, He gives her and her entire family new life and He claims her, His Bride, as His own.

The Prince tells Beauty, “To be commanded. is to feel one’s helplessness. I have awakened you. You’re mine. When you think night and day and every moment only of pleasing me, things will be very easy for you. You have a dignity about you that shields you from me. .I want you to surrender to me. The day will come when you can see nothing but me as if I were the sun and the moon, when I mean all to you, food, drink, the air you breathe, then you will truly be mine. Don’t you see, if you think only of pleasing me. it will be simple for you. I want that dignity peeled away from you as if it were so many skins of the onion. I don’t mean that you should ever be graceless. I mean that you should surrender to me.”

Beauty was in awe of Him, and instead of losing herself as she feared, she was “enhanced by her service... in wisdom and beauty.”  

Absolute surrender: imagine it.

If you want to be great in God’s Kingdom, you must learn to be the servant of all.

By focusing fully on what pleases God, you forget about yourself, about your self-conscious inhibitions, and your selfish ambition. You can begin to strip away your dignity (that which binds your hands in service of Him), by exposing yourself, by making yourself vulnerable, by being wholly honest, and by dedicating your whole heart and attention to any endeavor however large or small the Master calls you to. Refuse adulation as a vanity acknowledging only that you are in His service.

Matthew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God

All of the fullness of the Kingdom in the here and now can be ours if we will embrace the impoverishment of our spirits, come to an end of our own self-reliance, and learn to depend fully on our Master. It is only in submission that we can know freedom, only in the understanding that we cannot do it that we can be empowered. Bondage to Him is freedom from everything else, freedom from sin, freedom from destructive habits, and freedom from worry, doubt or fear.

God wants our hearts to be that of the natural submissive, and by the use of the term “submissive” I am referencing an underground lifestyle often associated with but distinct from goth. What I am sharing with you now was highly influenced by those in the dominant/submissive underground. Some call it BDSM, some S & M, others base their lifestyle on the fictional world of Gor, but however the roles are defined the Master is incomplete without the submissive, and the submissive can never be complete without a Master.

In the 1970’s the “Shepherdship” movement encouraged mature thinking adults to stop thinking for themselves and cast that responsibility on some other hapless sinner; when the inevitable disaster followed, the “submissive” left the church disappointed in the Shepherd or worse, in God.

God is our only Shepherd, and our only Master, but He is indeed our Master. He owns us and we are not our own.

I have been “collard” by Christ and this is how I choose to live, not because I have to but because I choose to.

The following creeds are from the BDSM and Gorean underground.

“What,” you may rightfully ask, “do they have to do with Christianity?” 

“What indeed,” I would answer. 

Creed One:
He is Master, and i am slave, He is owner, and i am owned,
He commands, and i obey,
He is to be pleased, and i am to please.
Why is this?
Because He is Master, and i am slave

Creed Two:
I am a slave; I am my Master’s property, human property, valuable property, but property.
I exist to serve my Master.
His slightest wish is my absolute command.
His smallest pleasure is my greatest goal.
When I obey as I should; immediately, to the best of my ability, with style and enthusiasm my Master receives honor and I bask in His reflected glory.
If should ever be lazy, rebellious, disobedient, or sloppy, that would dishonor my Master and me.
I live to please my Master.
I wait for the opportunity of being used however He sees fits.
I would gladly surrender my heart and soul, my body and being, my thoughts and actions, all I am or hope to become I would surrender.
But they are already His.  

To those that think I exaggerate the lesson we can learn from the BDSM community or the Biblical application of “submission” please consider the following:

1st Corinthians 6:19 – 20
Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? ? 20 ? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s

Romans 1:1
This letter is from Paul, Jesus Christ’s slave

If a Gorean or BDSM slave can live for his or her Master with absolute obedience, service, and honor, should we that belong to Christ do any less?

There is a work of prose that I first read as a teenager. It has remained, through the years, one of my favorite and most inspirational pieces. I have no idea who wrote it or where it came from, but in the context of submitting your whole self to God, I would like to share it once again in closing.

The High Calling

If God has called you to be really like Jesus in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility.  He will put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways, He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.

Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot.  And, if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent.

Others can brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing.  And, if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

Others will be allowed to succeed in making great sums of money, or having a legacy left to them or in having luxuries.   But God will supply you daily, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is a helpless dependence on Him, that He may have the privilege of providing for your needs day by day out of His unseen treasury.

The Lord may let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice, fragrant fruit for His coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade.

God will let others be great, but keep you small.  He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but he will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing.   Then, to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done.  This will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch on you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over. 

So, make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do as He pleases with His own.  He will not explain to you a thousand things that may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. 

God will take you at your word.  If you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot say or do.  Settle it forever, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hands, or closing your eyes.

Now, when you are so possessed with the living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Sprit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven. – Author Unknown

Take me Master.

I am Yours. 

Many blessings my beloved,
David