I’m a planner. Always have been. It’s very easy for me to see the logical next steps, and my stubbornness helps me persevere long enough to get there. My very “type A” personality complements my stubbornness very well – and as a result, if I may humbly say so myself, I’m pretty darn good at planning.
But what do you do when the very things that you thought were solid promises, the very circumstances that, for so long, you thought would pan out a certain way, suddenly change and the very things that you used to look forward to, plan for, and even dream about come crashing down? The plans that you had for your life that you always knew would happen a certain way and suddenly, they don’t. And reality sets in – the very relationships that you thought would sustain you and be there for you for as long as you can imagine, are suddenly not anymore. And the “shifting” and the “shaking” that you could have never anticipated takes place, and all your beautiful, “good” plans that were suppose to happen fall to pieces.
What do you do when the Lord clearly asks you to lay things down on the altar as a sacrifice? The correct, Christian answer is to obviously lay it down right? It should be that simple. But what people don’t tell you and the truth of the matter is, there’s a fight that happens. Every single time. Our selfish nature won’t go down without a fight – an internal battle that is this constant, annoying back and forth. Shouldn’t it be easy to choose God’s will for us? It’s obviously the better choice – the Bible tells me so. Yet, why is it so hard then to choose it?
“When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.” – Addison Leitch
There is no ongoing spiritual life without the process of dying and letting go. At that very moment when we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used in ways that God intended, we stunt the growth of the soul.
It’s so easy to make the mistake though of saying: “if God gave it to me, it’s mine.” I definitely have. These are MY relationships, MY friendships, MY career, MY future, and so on. But quite the contrary – it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him. Ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, ours to completely lay down.
Life requires countless “little” deaths – opportunities where we are given the chance to say ‘no’ to self and ‘yes’ to God. Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:11 that “while still alive, we are being surrendered into the hands of death, for Jesus’ sake…” I don’t necessarily think that every single thing that has anything to do with ourselves is in itself wicked and deserving of death; in fact, when Jesus said, “Not my will…,” there couldn’t have been even the smallest part of His will that was wicked. Instead, it was a chance to lay everything down – the good that He had done, and the good that He might do if He was permitted to live. All for the love and glory of God. And I believe that this same choice is offered to us.
We weren’t meant to die however merely to just be dead. God couldn’t have wanted that for the creatures whom He has given the breath of life – but instead, we die in order to live. A seed falls into the dark earth and dies; out of its death comes life. It takes faith to believe this. It takes faith to live by it, faith to act on it, faith to keep looking at the joyful end of it all. The analogy that I’ve always loved was this: when we look at an oak tree — firm, stable, tall, strong — we hardly feel that the “loss” of the seed is a very great loss. The more we perceive God’s purpose in our life, the less terrible the losses will seem.
There must be relinquishment. In fact, I don’t think there’s any way around it. At least I don’t know of any. The seed doesn’t “know” what will happen. It only knows what is happening now – the falling, the darkness, the dying.
I hate the laying down. I hate the dying to self. Because it produces uncertainty, and I have my doubts, my insecurities. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know where I will be. I don’t know what exactly I will be doing. And I fear the unknown. But heck, if I’m really honest, I don’t even really know what I want – because what I thought I wanted, what I had planned for, all those things fell apart. And the only real option that I have is indeed to lay it all down. As a planner, you can only imagine how difficult it is for me. But I can say with full confidence that I trust the Lord. I trust His leadership. I trust His will for me. And I trust His timing. And as a result I will continue to say my weak ‘yes’ because I want all that He has for me. Because over and over again, He has proven His faithfulness to me. He is for me – now and for the rest of eternity. And I will declare over and over again His truths – that He loves me, that He sees me, that He cares for me. Yes, even when He asks me to lay down the very things that mean the world to me, things that aren’t necessarily bad, I will still declare (maybe weakly at first) that He is good and He is for me.
This brings me to my next point: as long as our idea of surrendering is limited to the renouncing of “bad” and “unlawful” things, we will never fully understand its true meaning. Sacrifice is not limited to not doing what is “bad” but instead, voluntarily choosing to lay down what is “good.” God’s ultimate plan is far beyond our imagination – as the oak tree was from the seed’s imagination. The seed does what it was made to do, without pestering the Maker with questions about when and how and why. We, however, have been given an intelligence and a will and a whole range of wants and desires that can be set against Him – and as a result, we are asked to BELIEVE Him. We are given the chance to trust Him when He says to us “…whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)
Our vision is so limited that we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God is of a different nature altogether. It does not hate tragedy – which is sometimes really hard for me to wrap my mind around. It never denies reality. It stands in the very face of suffering. The love of God did not protect His one and only Son. That was the very proof of His love – that He gave His Son, that He would let Him go to Calvary’s cross. He will not necessarily protect us – not from anything that makes us more like Jesus. It’s the heart that He’s after; the purification of it. Oh the sanctification process – it’s a beautifully painful journey. But it’s out of love – He loves us and gave Himself for us.
So here I am – still uncertain, still scared, still clueless as to what is next or what the future holds. Yet still, I want to choose to lay it all down before Him. I want to wait expectantly knowing that His purpose and His plan is better than anything I could ever imagine. Because Jesus has yet to fail me.
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