"Give it to God"
"Just hand it all over to the Lord"
"Let go and let God"
Cute little Christianese for something I have never really been able to accomplish. I have given Jesus my life, my hurts, my sorrows; I have handed them to him; I have laid them before him; I have requested he take them; And I have thrown them at him. Sorry...it never worked for me. I always remained holding my stuff and wondering what on earth I was supposed to do with it!
Then one day Oswald created a new view for me. He said I cannot give Jesus something that is not mine to give and that the only thing I have that I can give is the right to myself. Now, for some reason, that made sense! It seems too abstract to say I need to give Jesus my life. I NEED my life so I can live! How do you give someone your life? But to give Jesus the right to myself...that I understood!
I could see what giving Jesus the right to myself looked like. For instance, I have the right to feel pain when someone behaves in a careless or selfish manner towards me. I have the right to feel negative feelings towards them. I have the right to live my life the way I want to live my life...it's my life. But to give up the right to that pain; to give up the right to those negative feelings; to give up the right to live my life in a mutually selfish manner. Now that was sacrifice! But it was something I understood!
As I sat there and let it all soak in, I began to offer my right to my pain to my Lord. And Jesus took my pain, and felt it, and had compassion on me. It was compassion unlike any human compassion I had ever experienced. He called me his child and wept for me. He bound up my wounds with his tender love and I knew then and there that I had a friend that would stick closer than any brother. This is the kind of compassionate Lord that I can give the right to myself to. I can give him my right to live my life for me. I actually want to. I would give him anything. But truth be told, all I have to offer is my right to myself...and for now, that'll have to do.
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2 comments:
when i first heard you talking about this, I have to admit that I was a little un-understanding about what was the difficulty in grasping this. How could such a simple tweak in the verbiage make such a difference. "your right to yourself." of course. But I began to wonder at how many concepts of surrender there are that I haven't quite grasped that may be only a verbal tweak away. Some of them are obvious to you and me and everyone. Someday I'll get them I pray.
I am remembering statements that you've made BEFORE this realization, and they play so directly into it. At the time, I couldn't figure for the life of me what you meant or where you were coming from. Now, it makes such perfect sense that this would be the verbalization of the concept that you would grasp and cling to.
Oh my! Now "that" makes so much sense to me. What a novel idea.
You refer so often to Oswald, and you've read to me from his book. This is now on my "to do list"...get his devotional book/journal. Thank you my friend for sharing those thoughts.
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