Do you ever reach a point with God where you feel like you’ve got nothing else left? I’ve been there. It feels like the darkest of nights; the driest of deserts. God has since moved me on from there. As I was praying the other day I kept feeling God moving me to reflect on those times in my life. As I thought about it, I felt those familiar feelings of frustation and anger surge through me. I began to think about all the things I’ve laid down in my life. I started to count my sacrifices and as I did, it seemed like a lot. It kinda pissed me off, really. “How much more could I possibly give up for God?” Then God answered me. He said, “All of it, that’s how much you can give. Everything you have or could have. I want all of it.” Immediately, I felt like such an idiot. God doesn’t just want our time or our money. He wants us every piece of us; every dream; every hope; every thought and most of all our love. The idea isn’t to make God buy in to our dreams for ourselves but to sacrifice our dreams and let God give us His aspirations for us. Ten years ago I imagined a much different future for myself then the reality that I currently live in. The funny thing is that even though my dream life sounds like it would be so much better than my actually life, I know it’s not.
I like the way Romans says it in the Message Bible:
“1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Romans 12:1&2
God doesn’t want our loyalty, he wants our love. You can spend your life doing things in God’s name, but all He really wants is for you to love Him and let Him love you back. Everything else that you do is supposed to be a product, or as the Bible calls it ‘fruit’ of that love. God sacrificed everything for us. He humbled himself by even coming here and walking among us. It’s like the worlds richest king intentionally giving up all his wealth to go and serve the peasants in his kingdom. He endure more pain than most of us will ever know and he died. I think we gloss over what He really sacrificed for us, because we here it so much. It gets to the point where it’s like “yeah, yeah I know Jesus died for my sins, yadda, yadda.” But think about it, and don’t lose sight of it. This boundless love that drove Jesus to die on a cross, is the same crazy love that God has for you and for me. It’s a love that we couldn’t even reciprocate if we tried, because it is supernatural. God knows that His perfect love is far beyond our human capicity of love, so He says He’ll just take what ever we have and call it even. It’s actually a really good deal if you think about it.
Okay, the moral of this story?
1. Stop complaining about what you have, don’t have, or did have.
2. Focus on loving God and letting Him love you back
3. Give it all up.
God wants it all, so give it to Him. Show him how much you trust him, and know that He’s got your back. God has the perfect plan for you.
Matthew 16:24 (The Message)
24-26Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?
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