He cannot bless us unless He has us

This is from A Year with C.S. Lewis:

For it is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves. For each of us the Baptist’s words are true: “He must increase and I decrease.” He will be infinitely merciful to our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise. For He has, in the last resort, nothing to give us but Himself; and He can give that only insofar as our self-affirming will retires and makes room for Him in our souls. Let us make up our minds to it; there will be nothing “of our own” left over to live on, no “ordinary” life. I do not mean that each of us will necessarily be called to be a martyr or even an ascetic. That’s as may be. For some (nobody knows which) the Christian life will include much leisure, many occupations we naturally like. But these will be received from God’s hands. In a perfect Christian they would be as much part of his “religion,” his “service,” as his hardest duties, and his feasts would be as Christian as his fasts. What cannot be admitted—what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy—is the idea of something that is “our own,” some area in which we are to be “out of school,” on which God has no claim. For He claims all, because He is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There’s no bargaining with Him. —from “A Slip of the Tongue” (The Weight of Glory)

The line, "He cannot bless us unless He has us," really struck me. There have been so many times in my life that I have cried out to God for His blessing, usually when I was struggling with something. How many of those struggles have been caused by not giving myself totally to Him? When I am living with my whole body, heart, mind and soul for God, I feel blessed all the time. Even during difficult times, I feel blessed because I know God is with me and I am with Him. Of course, the difficult times are still difficult and I would rather not go through them at all, but I would much rather go through them with God than without Him. I could not bear the difficulties of life without Him. I would feel crushed under the weight of them. But I am yoked with Christ and He helps me carry those burdens.