It occurred to me today to ask myself this question. What is there in this life that God does not want us to surrender to Him? For those of us familiar with what the Bible says, this is a no-brainer. Or is it? I mean, yeah, according to Luke 14:26 even our closest family, even our own lives are supposed to be subordinated to God if we want to be disciples of Jesus but how many of us have even begun to grasp what that means, much less put it into effect? There are many of us, especially in America, where we love our rights, who have boundaries in our lives beyond which we do not want God to go. Yes, God instituted marriage and loves families but does that mean that I ought to cling to my family such that I do not trust God with them? I have heard far too many stories of Christians walking away from God because they lost a child or their spouse left them.
The word used in Luke to describe what our attitude toward our family ought to be is "hate". Taken at face value, this sounds like God wants us to hate the people closest to us and that certainly doesn't seem right. Of course, the idea is that compared to my love for Him it ought to be as if I hate my family. In reality I will love them better than I could otherwise because, as His disciple, I will be learning what true sacrificial love actually is and I'll be called to put it into practice with my family. I'll also have His limitless resources to draw from instead of just my very finite resources.
As difficult as it is to imagine the kind of scenario Jesus calls us to, where we love him so much its as if we hate the people we love most, I personally think the last clause in His statement is even more difficult to swallow. According to Jesus, I ought to love Him so much it is as if I hate even myself. Elsewhere He says that anyone who wants to save his life must lose it for His sake. The Bible even says that I am not my own but am bought with a price. If I am a follower of Jesus, the Bible says, I died with Christ and my life is now His. My life is not my own. Before God, I do not have rights, even to my own life and identity. I know how this idea can grate on us, especially in the Western world. We love being self-made, self-defined and self-sufficient. That is the goal we strive for and the beginning of our worldview. The Bible, on the other hand, paints a much different picture. According to the worldview presented there, I am God-made, God-defined and His grace is sufficient. This can be a bitter pill to swallow. So, most of us don't.
There is a posture that God has been teaching me over the last couple years. It is a picture of how He wants me to relate to Him and this life. Hold out your hands, face up. Imagine all the things, people, dreams, ambitions and circumstances in your life resting in your hands. Now close your hands around them. That is how we live our lives, grasping onto all the things God has blessed us with. Now, open your hands again. Those things are still there, you still hold them but in a posture of surrender. God is free to take what He wishes and, just as importantly, to add anything that is lacking. This posture requires trust. Trust in action is Faith. When we claim to have faith but grasp, we are fooling ourselves. God is trustworthy. Let's open our hands to Him. If what the Bible says is true, we will be overwhelmed by how good He is.
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Your comments made me think of the Mercy Me song, "Bring the Rain." Specifically where it starts with people asking how he can still trust God after all the hard things he's been through and he just wonders "Can circumstances possibly change who I forever am in You."
ReplyDeleteI've actually thought about this a lot over the last few years too. I think that as Christians we have convinced ourselves that as believers everything should be easy, but I think the opposite is true. Example: If you go to a gym, you use weights and you struggle with them to become stronger. We can't become stronger in Christ without some spiritual weight-lifting and for a lot of us, the thing we are weakest at, is surrender.
Thanks, Jon. Great thought-provoking post.
Exactly Nate! The reality is that there are far too many "Christians" who enjoy the privileges of the company of believers and feel safe and secure because they are "Christians" and "Christians" go to heaven but they have no interest in growing to be more like Christ. Even those of us who are interested in growing can often find ourselves conforming to the patterns of the world in thought and action.
ReplyDeleteIts really a question of mastery. Who is our master? For most Americans, Christians included, the answer is ourselves. We are our own master. That doesn't work when the all-powerful creator comes calling. He is the boss.