Surrendering to God

Our younger daughter called yesterday to ask if we’d pray that God would open certain doors for her. This was a deep desire of her heart, one that she'd had since she was in elementary school, and she wanted us to join with her in asking for God's blessing. Soon after, our older daughter who is studying in the states sent an urgent message asking for prayer about a job she’d applied for in college (along with 400 other applicants). She was hopeful that through the position she could fulfill a calling that's been her passion for years. We prayed intensely for both of them, but our requests that they get what they so desperately wanted were sidelined by the greater desire that they receive what God desperately wants for them, even if it's not what they envisioned.

  It’s easy to establish in our minds what looks like God’s blessings in our lives. We sit and visualize the details of what would make us the happiest, and if we’re realists, we mingle these pictures with our gifts and talents to come up with blessings that not only look as if they’re right but seem absolutely reasonable. In our thinking, it's inconceivable that these dreams wouldn’t or couldn’t be God’s will.

Over time, the stored mental images about our desires begin to shape and define not only how we live each day, but most importantly how we respond to God’s plans for our future. When we receive what we want, we’re happy, even ecstatic. But when God unveils gifts that don’t align with ideals that we ascertain as "the best", we can become bitter and discouraged, wondering what went wrong and if God genuinely cares about us.

Our sense of entitlement to dreams can become so ingrained in our worldview that we eventually have to make a choice over whether we're going to continue embracing our right to them or surrender our lives and all our circumstances to God. It may take years for us to come to this crossroads, as life may seemingly appear to spring forth unscathed from disappointment. But eventually, if we’re seeking God and living for him, there will be a point of divergence and disappointment. At this crossroads, we have to make a choice, and unfortunately for many of us it’s not an easy one.
    
For two months now, I’ve been wrestling with a blessing I was certain was God’s gift to me. When I got news that it was being taken away, I was struck numb at first and then filled with questions like: How could God let this happen to me? Why would he take something from me that he had initially called and gifted me to do? I called friends, wrote e-mails, sat for hours and tried to figure out what my next step would be while also praying that God would reveal what I could do to bring about change. I wanted him to move the mountain that stood in the way of what I was confident was his will for me.

With this determination, life became a blur of wrestling and striving with God over what I perceived to be my right to happiness – until I walked into the office of one of our senior professors, a godly man known for his kindness and wisdom. Sitting beneath a glass top table in his office was a white piece of copier paper with three simple words printed in bold: Surrender to God. When my eyes caught them, I knew this was God’s message to me and his answer to  my prayers and striving regarding my situation. The key wasn’t in knocking on more doors, trying to shove them open, or sending follow up e-mails trying to protest the injustice of my situation, but it was in surrender. 

For the next six weeks as I waited to hear about any turnaround in my position, those words stayed fixed at the forefront of my mind, helping to reign in opposing thoughts when I was tempted to fret and demand my way. Ironically, I’d been teaching The Lord's Prayer to the Korean students in my English classes during the semester. The focus of our talks was about desiring God’s Kingdom and his will over everything -- "Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" -- even if it meant suffering. In the middle of teaching this, he gave me the opportunity to demonstrate trust in what I was encouraging them to do, even though it wasn’t what I found even remotely appealing. As I sat staring at this gift he’d placed in my life, I wanted to trash it, even destroy it. It wasn’t what I'd asked for or what I thought was best for me at all, but at that moment it was God’s will.

I began to daily, sometimes hourly, surrender my dream which gave me new freedom to hold out my heart and hands and ask God what his plans and will were for me instead. With this mindset, I was able to begin releasing the burden of my demands for happiness and experience freedom. “Your will be done,” was my refrain, even when I didn’t feel it or sense any great longing for it. I didn't pray it because it felt good necessarily, but because I was and am convinced beyond doubt that God is exceedingly, abundantly good at every point in time and won’t give anything but gracious, loving gifts to his children (Ps 107:1, 136:1). I’m also convinced, by simple logic, that what he’s given me (as I walk by faith and trust in him) is his absolute best (Rm 8:28).

God’s greatest gifts sometimes come in packages that don’t look at all like what we’ve asked for. In fact,  his best sometimes comes in parcels of pain and suffering, disappointment and loss. But if he is good, which he is (Lk 18:18,19, 1 Jn 1:5), and if he wants only what’s best for us, which he does (Jas 1:7), and if he’s all powerful and able to accomplish all his purposes for our lives, which he is (Eph 3:20), then we can completely, without any reservation trust him with what he gives us (Prov 3:5-6).

God did turn around my situation and, for reasons I may never understand, gave me back the gift that was for a season taken from me. I'm continuing to pray for our daughters, though I truly have no idea how God will answer our requests. They’re both asking for good things from a human perspective.  But God in his wisdom and understanding sees the greater purpose behind every circumstance and is the only one who is able to fully discern if they are or aren't what's best for them. 

We're all learning together to embrace this truth, so that we can pray and wait in quiet trust that he’s going to work out all circumstances for our ultimate good and the glory of his name. The only alternative is to keep clinging desperately to our vision for life, which if it’s not God’s vision and his will then it’s an idol that will undoubtedly eat away at our faith and trust in him. It’s only as we give up our right to what we want that we’re able to experience the happiness and joy we’re meant to have. God is good and his will is perfect. As we rest in this truth and seek to build our lives around it instead of our own plans and demands then we’ll be truly satisfied no matter what his answer.

Eyes Wide Open

This was written by someone who wants to remain anonymous. It's an amazing story of God's grace and redemption!

There is no better illustration of what God has been teaching me this past year than to tell about something I recently experienced. It’s so easy for me to think that I’m doing all right with my life and my faith. I go to a public school where most of the kids spend their weekends in a blur of alcohol. In seeing the mess of their lives, it’s easy to stop every once in a while and look in the mirror and tell myself that I am not doing ALL that bad. Actually it’s the simplest thing in the world to feel like I’m a good person if I compare myself to them. But that is not how God sees it or me and most definitely not reality.

Recently, I was going to a friend’s dorm when I walked past a group of about twenty kids sitting around tables in the woods. Something about the situation made me interested, so I stopped just to listen. And there on a freezing winter night these kids, who LOOKED just like me, were sitting around tables and cursing and screaming at God. It started with drunken songs making fun of Jesus being tossed around and soon it became a yelling match of insults at the God they weren’t sure was listening.

I could hear the anger in their voices and see it in their faces –anger that was rooted so deeply because every single one of them believed that this “god” had failed them in some way or another. And here they gathered together to yell insults and in some way avenge their wrongs. I could barely watch, because the first thought that hit me was that this is what the crucifixion must have felt like – all those thousands of people standing around and yelling “crucify, crucify” at a man who at that very moment was giving his life for them.

The irony stung me, because this God who we curse and spit on knew the hatred in our hearts and still chose to save us. And for a moment I felt like I was there and something just clicked because I was a part of that group of people with their alcohol and slurred insults. I saw myself in the crowd of mockers, and we were all standing around the bottom of the cross spitting at the one who came to heal us.

I was literally at a loss for words, because it had been SO long since I had seen myself as a sinner who was literally so broken and hard that it could only take an act of God’s grace to heal me – yet this is who I am. This whole experience almost broke me, and yet at the same time it made me so incredibly whole.

It reminded me that in the absolute depth of my depravity the God of all the universe saw me do this, he sees me do this again and again, and he chooses to forgive, to love, to wipe away the hatred and the pain and the hardness of my heart and to pick me up when I am face down and dirty and unable to go on. And I realized my God is jealous for every one of those broken people standing out there yelling on that November night. He is jealous for me, so much so that he died for me while I still hated him.

In essence, this is the greatest lesson I have learned this year -- that even though I often find myself in places that I could chose to see my goodness, God has shown me how broken and sinful I am, how my sins nailed him to the cross and how they in themselves were the burden he carried to keep me from death. It’s a terrifying place to be, but with it I have really come to see, in the tiniest of ways, the amazing love Christ has for me. It is a love that should revolutionize my life along with every thought and moment and word of mine. Because how can I live a normal life when I have received such an incredible gift of unconditional love and forgiveness?