So I think God spoke to me last Friday driving home from work.
As I have explained before, this sort of event when it happens - and that is rarely - is not the Thunderous Voice From Above or Pillar Of Fire experience. It is that simple moment where something comes into the mind and soul and one knows - definitively - that God has spoken.
The question was really "Are you willing to surrender everything?"
This is an ongoing discussion I have had within myself for some time, mostly with staying here where we are now. Not just the usual discussion about schools and churches but rather things about my own personal life and the activities I am in: Highland Athletics for example, or Iai (especially Iai). The thought has been "I can endure or even should stay in place because these activities make certainly other elements of my life bearable."
But I got a very direct challenge to that concept last week. And all of a sudden, my intense need to think I should do these things forever is challenged.
Do I need to immediately give all such things up? I do not think that was the point of the question. What I do think it involved was my tightly holding such things to myself and perhaps not being open to what God is asking of me.
In response to someone who asked about holding things tightly in their life, Corrie ten Boom replied "...I've learned we must hold everything loosely, because when I grip it tightly, it hurts when the Father pries my fingers loose and takes it from me!" (Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity)
Not a bad piece of advice for myself, either.
I think that if the Lord needs for us to give something or everything up he would also have a means to make sure we understood why and therefore would be eager to do what is needed. At that point it isn't so much giving everything up as it is doing what is needed for God.
ReplyDeleteOr so I would hope.
I do not always know that we get the why Preppy - At least, immediately. Sometimes we grasp it, like something we see in the rearview mirror. I think the second thing you said is the relevant one, doing what is asked for by God - needed not so much for Him but but what He wants for us.
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