Am I Totally Available to God?

The reflection in Magnificat today, that beautiful daily devotional, is on discipleship and discipline and it is what we need to drink in, by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis:

It is not enough by far to have taken radical initial steps of conversion and to be a reasonably observant and faithful Christian. At the center of our being we must remain poor and free and available to God, rather than barricade ourselves through habit to the approaches of God’s ever-surprising grace.
The passion for simply abiding in the company of Jesus, the need continually to be with him in every sense of that verb, is the very heart of discipleship. But how does one become a disciple?… Mature Christian freedom…is my total availability and obedience to the will of the all-wise God. We may initially find any disciplinary structure difficult, but with time we may so internalize it and identify with it that it becomes a new and comfortably improved self image. But that would be too bad, because this accommodation would defeat the purpose of Christian discipline as a permanent instrument of openness to the work of the Spirit within us. It is not enough by far to have taken radical initial steps of conversion and to be a reasonably observant and faithful Christian. At the center of our being we must remain poor and free and available to God, rather than barricade ourselves through habit to the approaches of God’s ever-surprising grace.