I never thought I’d get here, but here I am. Preaching the message that I had hoped to use the first time I preached. I guess the fifth time’s the charm.
I used to wake up often in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.
I say used to, because now I wake up often in the middle of the night for a VERY apparent reason. But back to the story. No apparent reason.
At least, that’s how it seemed. As I spent more time throughout those years growing in my faith and understanding of how God was working in my life, I came to realize that the reason was actually quite apparent. It became as clear to me as my hands on the keyboard at this moment…or I guess in THIS moment, it’s my hands in front of me. No keyboard. As clear as a summer day. As apparent as the sum of 1 & 1. Need I go on?
The reason was actually reasons. And it went one of two ways.
Either God wanted me to pray for someone or something, or there was something in me that he wanted to point out and have me change. If he wanted me to pray for someone or something, it was always a pretty sweet deal. I’d lay there praying until the name of the person or thing came to mind, and then pray for them (or it), and almost instantly I would fall back asleep, as if someone flipped me off like a light switch. I got to be involved in interceding for someone, and I got my sleep. Definitely an awesome deal. A pretty sweet gig, if you want to call it that.
But if I didn’t pray for the person, I’d lay there awake and have a fitful sleep at best. See, what it boiled down to for me as this: it’s all about surrendering my agenda rather than pushing for it to be followed.
It’s kinda like what I like to call “The Jonah Principle”. If you refuse to give up your will and do what God is asking you to do, you’re bound to run into storms. Let’s take a look at this a minute...
Jonah’s a prophet; a man called by God and sent out to deliver messages, and warn the people of coming judgment or other things of that sort. Basically, he’s heaven’s UPS or FedEx delivery guy, minus the cool cargo van (mind you, if you had a FedEx guy come to your door and start shouting about some coming judgment, you’d probably flip out!). He gets the messages to the people in time so that they can repent and turn back to God, before he decides it’s too late and wipes them out or punishes them.
Like our apocalyptic FedEx man above, Jonah (and the other prophets, for that matter) didn’t always receive such a warm welcome. But, in the end, it wasn’t a bad job, overall. He got to see the world for free. And I mean, who can really argue with that? Definitely an awesome deal. A pretty sweet gig, if you want to call it that…
So that’s Jonah’s job description. And like you or I, there were times when he didn’t like his job too much. Take this one time for example.
He’s sitting at home between jobs, waiting for the phone to ring, his pager to go off, his facebook chat window to pop open, or some heavenly twitter to come down from on high…. (For you purists, here ya go. He’s sitting in his tent, just outside of the last town he prophesied to. He was probably sitting on the ground, on a mat that he could easily roll up when he had to travel. His camel was sitting outside, and everything seemed right. He was just about to head to sleep, when…)
All of the sudden this voice pops into his head. He recognizes it right away… it’s God. He knows this because he talks with God all the time. After all, he is working for him, right? So you’d think he would communicate with his boss sometimes. Jonah patiently waits until God is through talking…or at least that’s what he intended to do.
About halfway through God’s latest assignment for Jonah, he mentions a large pagan city called Nineveh. Now, the Israelites really didn’t like the Ninevites… and vice versa.
So Jonah raises a complaint. “Wait a second, God. I don’t want to go there! The people are complete morons! They’re Godless (as if he needed to tell God who was Godless and who wasn’t) and perverted. What on earth do you want me to go there for? I mean, you’ve got to be crazy!”
But God won't hear it. “No, Jonah. I’m not crazy. Warn them to change so that they can repent and be saved from the coming judgement.” It’s obvious that he wants Jonah to go, no questions asked.
So Jonah reluctantly agrees (what he doesn’t seem to realize is that God knows full well that Jonah just said yes to please him, and that in reality he was planning on skipping out first chance he got).
So come morning, instead of heading out to Nineveh, Jonah skips town on a ship headed as far as he could possibly go in the opposite direction
(The really funny thing is, he actually thinks he’s getting away with running off on God).
Well, he rides this ship for a while, and all of the sudden, a huge storm whips up. It’s like nothing the sailors have ever seen before. And they had definitely seen it pretty rough. They're tossing absolutely everything off, over the side of the boat. But nothing’s helping. It looks absolutely inevitable; they are so going down. So they all start praying to different gods and all that, trying to get the storm to stop. But that doesn’t work either. Finally they go down below one last time to see if anything else is in the hold that can be thrown over. They find Jonah, fast asleep in the bottom of the boat.
WHAT THE HECK!? IN THIS STORM?!
Of course, they wake him up and tell him what’s up, and then he confesses that it’s all because he was running away from God that this was happening.
(Seriously, maybe NOT the best thing to admit to a bunch of scared-for-their-lives sailors…).
Instead of killing him out of frustration, like most normal humans would do if their lives were totally jeopardized like theirs were, they actually ask him, Jonah, the cause of everything, what they should do (must have been some storm to make them desperate enough to ask the guy who got them into the mess in the first place to think of some way to get them out of it).
Jonah tells them that all they need to do is throw him off the ship and into the water, and then the storm will stop (again, maybe not the best thing to be saying at this point in time). So they do.
I often wonder exactly how eager they were to throw him off…there’s a part of me that wonders if they weren’t all too happy to see him go down like a stone? At any rate, the storm immediately stops. Then Jonah gets swallowed up by a big fish, spat out on land, and goes and tells the Ninevites to repent. They do, and the whole city is saved. (Yes, I majorly abbreviated that last part, but that’s because it’s beside my point…)
Now, see what I mean? Jonah decided to run away from God and not do what he had been told to do right away, and things got rough. There were some pretty intense consequences.
But as soon as he admitted that he had done wrong, turned around, and did the right thing, things went much smoother. You can read the entire story in the Bible in the book of Jonah… it’s a short book right between the books of Obadiah and Micah, near the end of the Old Testament (which are also very small books too…). It shouldn’t take you too long to read it--it’s only like 2 pages long.
Anyway, that’s what I mean by running into storms. They aren’t always that big, but they are usually always enough to make us go “Oops… I messed things up here…”
So... back to my original story here...waking up at night…In general, I was pretty good with praying for the people, because I really liked my sleep.
How many of you remembered that I was talking about that in the first place?
But when it’s something that God wanted to point out and change in me, I was always a little slower on the draw. I seem to be a slow learner when it comes to things that directly affect me, as weird as that sounds. I guess if it affects someone else, I'm just quicker to change, because I don’t want to cause them any problems.
But I don’t seem to have that much of an issue with causing problems for myself, or creating inconveniences for my own personal walk through life. They’re like self-imposed obstacles and barriers, and sometimes it takes weeks or months or years for me to finally get over them and get their lesson through my thick head.
Very seldom do I learn it on the first try.
I’ve become familiar with spiritual “scraped knees” and “stubbed toes”. Stumbling through the fights I set myself up for is as difficult as finding your way through a pitch black room. And unfortunately, it has become a way of life at times. A habit that isn’t always easy to ignore. It’s counter-intuitive, if you think about it. We want the best for ourselves. So why do we fight it when the best might be a little tougher than sipping lemonade on our back porch on a hot day? Why do we turn down the only antidote for our otherwise incurable disease?
So often, the times that God shows me something that I need to change will turn into an inner wrestling match. Because I can’t be disgusted with God. He’s not the one who is taking forever to grasp the simple concept, laid out so plainly in front of my eyes. I’m too often blinded by other things. So I end up disgusted with--and fighting--myself.
The only problem with fighting yourself is, you are your own perfect match when it comes down to sheer willpower and strength. So unless the one side of you gets God involved, You’ll be wrestling for a long time. And time is not something that comes cheap. Every moment you waste fighting now is a moment you’ll never have again. Funny thing is, that’s not always enough motivation for me to get off my one-track mind and get on board with what God is trying to say to me or the direction he’s leading me in.
I used to spend a lot of time during these “divine wake-up-calls” writing in my journal… most usually at some obscure hour (that’s how these things always seem to work…it’s just a wonder any of it ever made any sense) –but I’d be spending time with no distractions, just really, really wrestling with the sin in my life, the obstacles in my life, the things I refuse to surrender in my life… and how so often I want so badly to change, but I never find a way. Or --even worse-- I refuse to accept the way that is presented to me.
The God-ordained detour takes me where I wanted to go, and it gets me there the best way possible. But I choose to blaze my own trail instead.
Something I found interesting looking back through much of my writing from these years is this: while it wrestles with a lot of very real questions, it doesn’t leave you hanging. Often now, when I write a piece, I will leave my writing hanging or open-ended to leave the listener or reader curious. But I think during this time in my life, I needed to feel the hope produced by an action. So many of my ramblings contained this line:
--I lay it down at your feet--
To me, this is HUGE. Ultimately, we can wrestle with our sins and addictions and struggles and temptations from now till kingdom come. And we will. I’m sorry I can’t promise that it’ll get any easier. But it’s not that there’s no hope. See, the thing is, without actually taking that step --that action-- and laying it down at the feet of Christ in total surrender—total surrender to the one who was totally surrendered— all of our wrestling is useless and futile struggling, which will inevitably end in failure, with us completely drained and dead. No one can use a dead man for anything.
See, the question is this: Our way, or God’s way? The “rugged individualism” that our society promotes so highly as an ideal to be achieved does not glorify God. But surrender does. God is glorified when we acknowledge that we need him. Jonah found this out the hard way, after being caught in that storm, thrown overboard, and spending three days in the belly of a huge fish. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather learn without some life-or-death situation coming my way first.
Once we’ve taken that initial action, and tasted how sweet surrender really is, we start to want it more and more. So we will come back to Christ again and again and again to gain that freedom that we desire so much; that freedom we crave that he freely gives. When we have discovered the true freedom found only in Christ, we have found the way to change, and we will never be--or never want to be--the same again. The freedom found through surrender is incredible. Don’t let your life drift by without ever tasting that sweet freedom. Refuse to allow yourself to be cheated of this gift. Surrender it all. Take that step.
What is it that you think you can’t surrender in your own life?
What is it that you think you can’t surrender in the life of The Well?
The real challenge comes in here, though. See, surrendering to God is a lifestyle. There may be a point where you say to him: “Hey, God, I give up. You’re in control now. Use me.” But it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to need to keep checking up daily to make sure that you are still in that state of surrender. Otherwise our human nature decides to take over and take control. So it’s a constant, ongoing thing, just like eating, drinking, and sleeping. You can’t just coast by and expect it to take care of itself.
One of my favorite passages that deals with surrender is Romans 12:1-2. It says this:
“Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is for you; his good, pleasing, and perfect will.”
So we're supposed to offer ourselves, surrender ourselves, and be transformed by Christ. It's ONLY then that we will know what God's will is in our lives.
I want to share a journal entry that I wrote up shortly after hearing a sermon preached on those verses, and then I’ll expand on the whole deal a little more for you. But check this out:
What good is it if we present ourselves as living sacrifices, but then keep crawling off the altar? It’s a guarantee; we will crash if we try and pilot our own lives. It’s a flight headed for destruction. We can either be slaves to sin, which leads to death, or we can be slaves to obedience, which leads to righteousness. Which would you rather be?
The biggest problem with us is the fact that most of the time, we aren’t dead to sin, or dead to the things we cant let go of in our lives, we’re just really, really sick. So we get up and walk off the altar. Death is the inability to respond in any way to anything around you. So if we are truly dead, we cant respond to sin. So are we truly dead? Or just really sick? How we live in private; in our homes; where no one else can see us, will reveal who’s really in control; who’s on the throne in our lives.
What do people think of when they think of you? Do they think of Christ? Or something else? It’s a continual process; constant surrender. And it’s not easy. We want control. We want all the gain with none of the pain. We want to take steps forward without running into and problems to hold us back. We want the easy way out; the life on easy street. So what are we holding onto? Whatever is keeping us from dying is keeping us from living. So what’s keeping us from dying? What are we so scared of? Why do we shy away from surrender?
Offering ourselves as living sacrifices is the ultimate form of surrender. It’s saying “God, you know WAY better than me, so I’m going to let you be in control of all that I am, and everything that I’ll ever be.” It’s not something that you can do just flippantly or anything though either. You can't surrender to someone unless you mean it.
The surrender is carried one step further as we are challenged not to “conform any longer to the patterns of this world”. Our surrender needs to be so complete, to total, so overwhelming of the man or woman we used to be, that we need to look different. We need to gauge everything we do by Christ’s standards.
True surrender to God means your life changes.
It means that nothing stays the same, and you become a better, stronger, deeper person. It means you relinquish all control and subject yourself to the loving guidance of Jesus Christ. And as you continue on following Christ in complete surrender, you learn to be more and more like him. As you present yourself as a living sacrifice, it takes some dying to self. But the freedom that comes in the end is so perfect that once you’ve experienced it, you won't want to go back. Once you’ve experienced the true freedom of surrender, you will remain forever changed, and forever changing…Changing more and more into who you were created to be.
But everything in society goes against the idea of surrender. Everything around you is going to fight that concept. In fact, everything inside of you is going to disagree at times.
And I’m sorry, but it won't be easy for a second.
Here’s another journal entry that I wrote when I was trying to sort out what it meant to really surrender everything; to totally give up despite the fact that everything around me screamed to hold on and keep control myself. I think it’s a pretty good example of the struggle that it can be to surrender things in your life. Maybe it can help some of you connect the whole concept in your mind a little better.
To be totally honest, I am struggling with giving my future, along with my dreams and the things I want for my future, totally up to God. That’s what it all boils down to. I have my own plans and ideas of how I want it all to go, and there are days where I rip the plans out of Gods hands and say “Ok God, now you sit back and watch me... I’m going to put myself in the spot I need to be in.” Then God sits back and watches me mess it all up, and lovingly comes back and says “Ok, now you know what happens when you take it all into your own hands. Allow me to guide you, and it will all work out.”
For a while that works, as long as I am in the convalescence ward at the hospital, but then as soon as I get discharged, its like I had some sort of brainwashing surgery, because I’m right back at running my own life again. You’d think I would have learned by now that it only leads to problems, but yeah, lets just say that I’m a slow learner in some areas. And here’s the kicker:
Let’s face it. We all are. Self absorbed and unwilling to give total control of our lives to the one who designed and created us. Unwilling to give total control of our lives to the one who relinquished all control of his own life for our sake on the cross.
Now, if you ask me, that would logically be the best place to put the control of your life--in the hands of the one who made it. But do we take the hint? No! Stupid, stupid us. I think it becomes most painful when you are praying for something to happen, and then as time progresses and you move on in life, you realize that the place God has you going with that particular thing isn’t going to be where you had hoped. Or when it starts to look like its not going to pan out the way we want it to, we run away or say “God I want control now”, only to find ourselves stuck in a ditch less than a mile down the road. So I sit here now, quite upset about the fact that I cant seem to get it all through my thick skull...
Like I said, it’s never easy. It’s a constant struggle; a constant battle. But it can be won day-by-day, hour by hour, minute by minute, if we are willing to allow God to have control of our lives whenever we face something that we don’t know how to handle.
But we can't just give him control of part of our lives. We need to give control of everything. That’s the point where it becomes the biggest struggle for most people. The thing is, we have it too good here in North America to even begin to understand what “Surrender” really means.
Do we really understand the depth of what it means? Do we grasp the intricacies of what it means to desperately throw ourselves at the feet of Christ in total surrender, knowing that we can’t ever do it on our own? Do we understand what it means to have nothing but Jesus Christ left, and to surrender the “nothing” that we have in order to gain everything?
God wants everything we are. And he deserves it all. We need to mean what we say when we stand in church singing “I surrender all”. And then we have to keep our word. No going back on it, not re-nagging on it.
We need to give the throne in our lives to God for good, and keep on being filled to that we have the strength to say no and die to ourselves, offer ourselves as living sacrifices, and give God the control once more. It’s a cycle; a process; an ongoing thing. And here’s the ironic part—it’s only through total surrender to Christ that we finally find who we truly are.
Lets strive to live every moment of our lives as a living sacrifice.
If listening in is more your style, take a gander over here...
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