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The only exercise that works 100 percent of the time to draw one close to the real God is risk.”
Then he went on, “To risk is to willingly place your life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch him come through. He starts to get real when you live like that.”
God showed up in the flesh. Christ appeared and turned our system of being good on its head. When Jesus came, he went to the most broken, the least good. In fact, it was always the most sinful he ministered to. He touched them and healed them and loved them, and they loved him back. They needed him.
God is home to us. He is where we were made to be. He is what we were made for. We just forget all that while we are trying to be good and independent.
We like to see great testimonies of God’s grace, but we don’t want to be the testimony.
Little deaths always feel like big deaths until you let go. After you let go you wonder, what was the big deal?
But God often seems unconcerned with helping us maintain same, simple lives where everything fits and works. I don’t know what God’s plans are for you, but I do know that we don’t hear from him until certain things die. He doesn’t compete. And when he does speak, it typically costs something.
God builds our lives whether we give him permission or not. It is the fight for control that has us all tied up, while it’s really an illusion anyway. We control because we are afraid of what may happen if we let go. Do we really think we are better captains of our lives than a God who sees everything and deeply loves us?
“I trust God.” The beauty of the statement on this day makes me cry. God, give us enough faith for whatever the stories of our lives will hold, even on the worst of days.
Theologian Tim Keller says if you love anything more than God, even though you believe in God, if there is anything in your life that is more important to your own identity or significance than God, then that is a false god and it is a power in your life.5
Until there is total surrender, there is no vision.
surrender is usually dying to self on a daily basis
and most often found in the mundane. Lunches had to be made, conflict with some friends had to be resolved, and toilets still needed scrubbing.
Surrender may include unconditionally respecting a spouse or family member who is not displaying the form of godliness you crave. This is such a sensitive subject because, as women, our obligations to our husbands and families often make us feel as though our lives are even more out of our control. But part of trusting this God and part of obeying him is participating in his plan for our relationships. For married women, running ahead of our husbands shows them we don’t need them, shows them they can’t lead us, that we are faster, deeper, and love God more. If you’re married, know that making
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As a generation, I believe we are all yawning and waking up, identifying these currents, and comparing them to the truth of God. We’re considering this simple but game-changing thought: If God is really real and we are going to live with him forever, shouldn’t he be the only thing?
Shouldn’t he be the controlling force of our lives? If we really believe this . . . As a generation, we feel a growing desire to keep from turning into the kinds of religious people God looked at while he was on earth, when he said, “This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me” (Isa.
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Moses and Jonah and Esther all wished their callings away. But in their obedience, God was changing the world and building his stories.
Without the Spirit of God to lead our anythings, we will only be do-gooders with our own agendas. And they will fizzle. It will be a phase, some dramatic spiritual experiment we look back on fondly, wishing it had been real life. But sometimes the real thing takes time. We prayed anything, but it was over the course of months and years that our anythings have been revealed. I imagine this will continue for the rest of our lives; if we remain willing, more anythings are in store.
During that study, I saw some things in David I hadn’t seen before. I saw his eyes—they were laser focused on God. He had a disaster of a life, but every time his eyes veered, he quickly and instinctively refocused them on his God. This pleased God so much that he would run his future kingdom through David, calling him a man after his own heart. This screwed up, laser-focused guy pleased God.
The problem with following Jesus is he does things backward— freedom and true life came out of his death. In turn, to follow Christ to the cross, we jump, trusting him with everything, praying anything, handing over every day and all that lives in it to a person—in death we find life and freedom too.
