If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, do you remember when you first gave your life to Him? In that moment, you probably told The Lord that you surrendered all of your desires, plans, skills, talents, relationships, and resources to Him. That pledge is a serious one, and most of us who made it, made it with all sincerity and even enthusiasm. We even began to see ourselves as His possession, available for His purposes. Shoot, we gave Him the key to our lives – keys that we wrongly held as our own. And according to His plan, He probably began to test our devotion.
That’s the catch. The thought of letting Jesus have our all was liberating, until He began to take our word for it, then we balked. “No, not me” we say. “I would never refuse or question Jesus.” Really? Remember when He removed a loved one from you? Threaten your financial security? Limit the use of your time and talents? It hurt. It had to. You see, He has to help us see that our “devotion” must be more than theoretical. He won’t let us live under the illusion that we have surrendered our all to Him when we haven’t. In our hearts, we must let everything go, or let go of everything, everything but Him.
“Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
It’s often a shock to our system that God would actually take us up on what we have offered to Him. When we tell Him we’ll go anywhere and do anything for the glory of His name, we have to mean it. He already knows whether we’re authentic in our devotion, but do we? More than us, He wants us to know for sure. So, when we develop hard feelings toward Him because He hasn’t given us what we wanted, or has taken away what we thought was ours, that’s when we know He has opened our eyes. The truth is, we still wanted to have a say in some of the areas of our lives rather than turn them over completely to Him.
So, did we really mean it when we told God, “I give my life to You”? If so, His removal of our props should come as no surprise. We cannot “give” Him our lives and then complain when He literally takes us at our word and takes part of it – or painfully touches them. If we have truly given our lives to God, Our Lives Are His. Therefore, we must believe that He has higher purposes for our lives than we do, and we trust Him. And get this, our trust in Him is something we can control. Agree?
Have a rest-filled weekend. Make it better by worshiping The LORD with those who know they are control-freaks and daily surrender their lives to Him because they know He knows best.
All For Jesus – Nothing More, Nothing Less, Nothing Else.
Vic Alvarado 