Dear God,
I am choosing to let go and be free of the “what if”s and “should’ve been”s because they’re keeping me from my destiny. I chose to live in freedom. No one can take away my peace if it comes from Jesus. I am choosing to follow Your good plans, no matter how confusing or strange it looks, because I believe that Your character speaks enough. It feels good to rest here. I don’t want to force my way. I’ve already tried and miserably failed. Let’s do this again. Let’s pour again. Let’s build again. I have it in me to let go this time.
Love,
Grace
Psalm 127: Living in Vain
What is the point of getting what you want if God is not in it?
The purpose of today’s end of the year blog is for me to remind myself and others that it’s pointless to pursue what God doesn’t have for you. You can kick and scream. You can manipulate and seduce. You can lie, steal, and beg. And you know what? God lets you get what you want. God will allow you to get the job, secure the relationship, get the big bucks, and you can have it all without having God in it.
How badly do you want it? How much will it cost you? Whose debt do you have to be in to achieve what you call success? I think about all the things I asked for, and the times God has said “yes” did not make them any easier. In school, I believe God granted me His blessing to become a doctor. I think I could’ve been a lot of things beyond that, but some things I was not graced for.
I’ll be honest: I was considering being a medical doctor. People did ask me why not go to medical school? But as I prayed, I felt like my motives to go would be wrong. It would be so that people would take me seriously. It would be for the glory it would get me. “Then consider the consequences. Jacob had to leave home for more than twenty years in fear of his life. He then suffered an almost identical deceit practiced against him by Laban when he substituted Leah for Rachel.” -- Was Jacob Right to Take the Blessings?
Maybe if Jacob hadn’t tricked his brother, he would have married someone without needing to work 14 years for her. Maybe Jacob didn’t have to break his relationship with his brother. Jacob didn’t have to take that route, and neither do we. That wasn’t the only way. Something I ask myself is: “In what ways am I trying to control the situation now, Lord? Reveal to me how I’m trying to control this situation instead of trusting and surrendering to You.”
The Bible talks about living in vain. Doing it all for you. What you want. How you want it. When you want it to be.
“Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain.
In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to those he loves.”
Leave It Alone
Controversial take: sometimes it takes more faith to do nothing.
I don’t mean nothing in the literal sense. I mean nothing as in “do nothing but trust God”. You did everything in your human power and ability, and now you stop and be still -- know that God is God. If you’re controlling (me), you can’t stand that.
Isn’t it more faithful to do? Work? Pray harder? Fast again? Attend more services. Listen to more sermons. There’s seasons to it. Seasons where you try hard. Seasons to do more. Then there’s the season to stop. Ask yourself, “What season am I in? Am I doing more because God asked me to or am I doing more because if God won’t/can’t/doesn’t want to then I will?”
Sometimes under the claim of faith, we do more because we actually don’t have the faith that God is doing anything. I think as a woman, I have the “Fine, I’ll do it myself” mentality. I mean I can do it faster. Better. The right way. And I take the reins of my life when I have no idea where to go.
Did you ever have a pimple? Every sane doctor will say: leave it alone. Don’t pick at it. Why? Because your fingers have germs. You can pop that pimple for temporary satisfaction and a false sense of making the pimple smaller when actually you introduced bacteria in. Now you can get an infection. Scarring. The pimple comes back angrier. Life is the same.
Sometimes there are situation pimples we’re dying to put our grubby hands on to pop.
I’ve been thinking about how I can make my blogs more applicable so below I’ve included some possible examples you can encounter:
You like someone who has no interest in you. You try to show up where they’ll be. You message them trying to get something going. You try convincing them they should like you. You hope that it’s like exposure therapy. More of you means they’ll like you. But it’s not working. What do you do?
You can think “I just need to try harder. Then they’ll wake up and see I’m the right guy/girl for them. They just don’t know how awesome I am.” You can try different tactics, read up all the books and articles on making your crush like you, and pray day and night for God to open the eyes of the blind or…
You can turn to pray. You can tell God, “You know God, I really like this person. I think they’re really cool, but they’re not reciprocating my feelings. It hurts a lot. It makes me feel like something is wrong with me, but I know that everyone is allowed their free will and for some reason they just don’t like me. Help me to respect their decision and respect myself by letting go of this. It doesn’t mean I’ll be mean or rude, but I’ll back off and let You be in control.” You can still be honest about your hopes, but you don’t have to scheme your way into a relationship. Leave it alone.
You really want that job. You’ve spent hours on updating your resume. Had the best experiences. Got interview coaching. You finally get a chance to apply to be immediately shut down or have the door close at the last second. What do you do?
You write a very angry email to their department or you get even more experience you think will make you a stronger candidate. You reapply again and again. You hate your current job because you would be so much happier if you got that job instead. You compare your life to everyone else’s because there’s so many people with their dream careers.
Or you can definitely try again next cycle, but this time you take the chance to ask God if this no was a not now or a never? You pray for discernment. You ask yourself why you even want this path: what is the reason in your heart? You decide that even if God said no or the company doesn’t want you, that doesn’t mean anything about your value. You don’t compare your life to other people’s because you have no idea what’s really going on and you never will. You decide that regardless of the outcome, you will be honest to God about how you feel but that it won’t break you.
You’re trying for a baby. It’s been months into a year into years. IVF. Countless doctors visits with no real answers. Sperm counting. Egg freezing. Injections. Tests. Prayers. People at church are fasting for you. Every blog is being read. Every “infertility journey” on Youtube has been watched and religiously studied.
You spiral into depression. Your relationship with your partner is fraught with the stress of making a baby. You blame them, yourself, and God for this curse. You base your womanhood or manhood on being able to have a baby. Resentment for everyone with a child grows. Why does everyone get to have what you want? There’s drug addicts, prostitutes, child molesters who have baby after baby. Why does God hate you? Why does God think you’re going to be a bad mom/dad?
You can allow yourself to be angry and grieve. You can allow yourself to fall apart, and be honest. You don’t have to pray that your desire for children will go away. You can embrace the pain and be real with God about your questions. You can end the belief that being a parent is a defining part of anyone’s life, and you can also still want it. You know that having children isn’t something that goes on honors metrics, and you keep praying and asking and trying without it being an obsession.
Who is God to you?
Everything comes from an outflow of our perspective. Is God for or against us? Loving father or cruel dictator? Kind shepherd or vengeful warden? I’ll be honest, when things go wrong I feel like it’s a punishment. I didn’t pray enough. I heard wrong. I was bad. I didn’t deserve that good thing. It must’ve been me. I failed. If only I had been better, then God would’ve worked things out in my favor.
I feel God breaking down the false ideas I had about Him. That everything that happened was from love. Even if it hurts me. Even if it means disappointing me. That means I choose to trust God. I choose to believe that God is for me, and that I might be shocked, but God has been fully aware. I might be struggling to come to terms with what happened, but God has already planned beginning to the end.
Lay It Down
Imagine being 100 years old, and God finally fulfills His promise to you to give you a son. 25 years ago, you believed, but it became harder to hold on as year after year passed you by. It seemed more and more impossible. Why wait so long? Why not tell you this promise at year 99? Why does God give you the promise with no tracking number, ETA, or anything to indicate it’s actually coming besides Himself.
Then the baby finally comes. Wrapped in cloth, your promise is birthed. How precious do you think any baby is? Now magnify that a million times when that baby is not only given to you at the impossible age of 100 years old, but you know God gave you this as a promise. This is no ordinary baby. That’s the story of Abraham and his wife Sarah. Waiting, yearning, confused, yet hoping in God for what others will call them foolish to believe in.
So imagine, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Issac after -- what? How does that make any sense? Why would that make sense? That’s crazy! Seems more like a request from hell itself. Seems cruel. Looks like evil. Yet God is good. God is always good. To us. For us. With us. Good.
I don’t think Abraham became the father of faith when Issac was born. I believe he was the father of faith when he saw the impossible was small in the face of a big God. When he was willing to give the most precious part of his heart back to God.
He probably had his own plans and desires for Issac. Every good parent has good dreams for their child, and God is no different. It’s just that God’s dreams are nothing like the ones we have. God’s heart isn’t muddled with selfish motives or wrong intentions.
I really struggle with God on laying things down. I’m suspicious. I want an immediate return on investment. Waiting. Patience. Longsuffering. All of these things sound awful to me. But God doesn’t do quick and easy. He’s a God of good things that takes a long time. He has all the time in the world to wait. Me, on the other hand, I feel rushed and constantly out of time.
Accepting My Limitations
Today is New Year’s Eve! Exciting. Thrilling. Wow. Another year in the books.
Time is amazing, unstoppable, and uncontrollable. Yet, that terrifies me. It scares me to not be in control. I can’t control gravity or time. I can’t control the weather outside. I can’t control my body or health. I can’t control the outcome of things.
Lord, help. I can’t go into this new year carrying the same burdens. I want to leave things alone. I want to pick up the cross You have for me, but not the crosses I decide I should add on. The cross of changing someone’s heart or mind. The cross of being burdened to save my loved ones. The cross of being the best doctor or student. Crosses I just decided I wanted to carry because if I lay them down, what will happen?
So many times I spiral downwards. “What if it goes badly? What if I mess up? What if God doesn’t come through?” but I’m challenging myself to go beyond what feels comfortable or normal. I want to spiral upwards. “What if no matter what happens, God is going to take care of me? What if God had this all in mind? What if I’m not alone in this? What if it’s going to be okay?”
What if I accept that I’m not in control and that’s a good thing?
It’s hard. I don’t think I’ll ever get there fully in this life, and I’m learning that just leaning in towards that is a step in the right direction.
Expect Things Will Go Wrong
I’m a big dreamer. I love that about myself, but sometimes it’s a self-destructive bomb. It becomes an idol if I don’t avidly watch it carefully. It becomes my basis of God’s goodness and love for me.
I want to be optimistic, hopeful, and true to myself. Sometimes that means I need to have a loose grip. That means holding something or someone, still having my attachment and hopes, but not so tightly that God can’t move things around.
I make myself sick with trying to hold onto “what should’ve been”. I am easily obsessive. I can fixate on what went wrong. Why I’m not good enough. Why things seem to never work out.
Being human in this broken world is accepting that things will go wrong. It’s not being pessimistic, and it’s not the same as expecting things to go wrong. Accepting comes with freedom, ignoring or expecting the possibility of things going wrong are both forms of slavery. Having a loose grip allows that to happen. It enables us to have hope without being outcome-driven. It allows us to experience grief and loss without being consumed by it.
Letting God build means letting our plans be secondary to the ultimate mission: allowing God to decide how He wants to have His glory shown.
I want us both to practice an exercise in letting go to let God build our lives.
First I want you to imagine all the things in your life that you find meaning and value in. Your health. Your financial stability. 401k. Family. Friends. Talents. Closet. Intellect. Charm. Attractiveness. Then I challenge us to one by one remind ourselves: Lord, I find my identity in these things. I know it would pain me to lose them. I know it would shake up my world. I’m afraid of letting go and not working to secure or build them myself. But there is something I miss out on when I grip too tightly. I miss experiencing the intimacy of our relationship that can only grow through trust. So one by one, I want to speak out about letting these things go. That doesn’t mean I won’t work on them or be passive. It means that I won’t let it consume me. It means I will have a loose grip. It means I can let things be outside of my control, be sad, but not be destroyed. I can rest. I can be still. I can trust You, God.
Ending prayer
Dear God,
Time doesn’t stand still and neither do You. You actively work on our lives. You’re not a tool to make our lives better or more comfortable. You’re a living, loving, and amazing God who out of love made us. I pray to cultivate my life with heaven in mind. Living just to live is boring and exhausting. Help me to be someone who people can recognize as having a close relationship with You.
Love,
Grace
Comments
Post a Comment