Surrender. It all comes down to surrender. Does anything we have in our lives actually belong to us? Did we decide on and create the people in our lives to custom fit our needs and our circumstances? No, of course not! Our all-knowing, wise Creator did! The people in our lives are gifts from God. They are instruments used for God purposes.
Surrender is key to Christ-centered relationships; so that when the time comes to let go, you already have. Now I am not saying that you should not love or even that you should love less. Of course that would be disobedience to Christ’s many commands to love one another and give thanks for each other. This does not mean you live at an arms distance either because the New Testament clearly demonstrates living life with each other and bearing each others’ burdens and joys. But the best love, what I believe to be the most Christ-glorifying love, is love with open hands. Holding loosely to the things and people God has entrusted to you.
This comes back to living with eternal perspective. Relationships, as we know them, are also temporary.
They serve eternal purpose and with believers they have an aspect which will last for an eternity. But that is the Christ-glorifying aspect! What we manage to accomplish in the slightest way here of centering our relationships around Christ is only a shadow of the purpose of our eternal relationships with other followers of Christ. John Piper writes in Don’t Waste Your Life about a plaque which hung in his home as a child. My sister also made me a replica of it which hangs over my bed. It reads, “Only one life twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
If you live a life of constant surrender, you respond differently to God’s direction. Take possessions for example. If I have surrendered my possessions to God, then when something is stolen, sold, or given away it comes with ease and joy because I’ve already given it to God! It is His anyway. My life doesn’t fall apart at the loss of those things. Surrendering your possessions can be tough and has to be done every time you make a Christmas wish list or start packing for a big move. But something I believe is even harder to surrender than possessions is relationships. Relationships of all kinds – with our parents, with our friends, with our sisters and brothers, with our church family, with children, and with husbands.
Remember the idea of living with open hands. This is where holding loosely becomes so important. In receiving and giving of the things we’ve been entrusted with by God, keeping this “open hands” mindset gives freedom to live for eternal things. Again, this does NOT mean you do not love, invest in, cherish, and serve the people in your life; rather it means you do those things for the sheer glorification of Christ. If in Christ’s call for you to die to self and take up your cross, He requires you to go great distances from your family and friends or you lose a dear one to death or sickness, open hands enables you to trust God’s greater purpose and bigger plan. Great challenges and lose will come in our fallen world, ask God to instill this concept into your heart and life ahead of time.
For example, as a single I surrender my future husband to God. I hold loosely to him before I even know who he might be. Whether or not God chooses to give him to me or however long or short God allows me to have him before one of our deaths, I surrender him. I surrender my children, before I even have them. That means whether or not God allows me to have children, how long my children might live, and how they might obediently follow Christ in difficult or distant ways. I have neither husband nor children right now, but these are areas in my life that demonstrate the need to live with open hands. Even when God entrusts us with relationships for a season of our life, we are to receive, rejoice, and release- all with open hands.
What if we don’t surrender? Sometimes we turn the blessings from God into idols. We turn the things that God intended for us to use as tools for serving Him into things we serve instead of Him. This is no different from those mentioned in Romans 1 who traded worshipping the Creator for worshipping mere created things. Living continually with two open hands leaves no room for clinging to an idol or hiding it behind your back. Surrender has to be daily. We cannot muster up the ability to surrender. We must ask for it from God. The good news is- it is God’s desire too, and He will equip us and strengthen us each day!
Katie Kasey is a 2+2 (International Church Planting M-Div) student at Southeastern. God has given Katie the privilege of serving Him in Ecuador on several occasions, as well as Ukraine and East Asia. Katie serves at North Henderson Baptist Church in Henderson, NC, with her family. She is excitedly preparing to serve God both at home and overseas. Katie’s greatest joys in life are her two sisters Britney & Meredith and their wonderful husbands- John Marks & Ricky, and her parents Brent & Teresa. She also loves using photography and writing to encourage others and promote God’s glory among all people.
0 comments: