Last year I made an astounding discovery: God doesn’t need me. He is sovereign, divine, just, righteous, and perfect, while I am nothing, saved by grace from the punishment I deserve in an eternal hell. November is my birthday month and, taking stock of my life, I realized a thought pattern that needed complete elimination. Just because I have “dedicated my life to the Lord” and have given Him free lease to accomplish His will in me does not mean God will use me in the way I had once imagined.
“I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own
desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. Use me as Thou wilt.
Send me as Thou wilt, and work out Thy whole will in my life at any
cost, both now and forever.
Amen”—Betty Stam.
Taped to the front of my Bible, that prayer daily inspired,
challenged, and encouraged me throughout my college years. Would I give up everything for
God? The prayer became a continual
exchange for me, a regular surrender. I began to dream—of the many ways God
would use me, for I was convinced He would.
Surrender. It’s
still a theme in a few fundamentalist circles. Somehow over the years I had adapted this inane notion that
the more surrenders I made, the more God was obligated to use me. In fact, nothing could be further from
the truth: God is good, and He has
a right to do whatever He will with His own. While many Christian circles are
neglecting challenging their young people to full-time service, there are still
those who preach that surrender of one’s life is natural and normal Christian
behavior (See Romans 12:2).
Certainly, in the zeitgeist of this day, emphasizing full surrender is
lacking and ought be more esteemed.
I was not unlike many other Christian young people who grew
up in my home church. At six, I gave God complete access to my life, said I was
willing for Him to take me to the mission field, to give me a dozen children,
to allow me to be put in prison, persecuted for Christ—whatever He wanted. All the while, I imagined myself to be
selfless. And then, I again
realized that God, in His sovereignty had neglected my imaginings and had given
me a better plan. His will. A perfect way. Far better than I ever could have
dreamed. Remember? God doesn’t need me, but I can believe
Him to work out His perfect will in my life.
As I examined my thoughts, I realized that the imagined life
of surrender still exists in the minds of many—especially young women. Aspirations and hopes fill their minds
in a dreamy sense of reality that may or may never exist. Christian girls who fast and pray for
the man they will marry—but then never marry, because God has other plans—at
last must meet a point at which their idea of surrender is re-evaluated. Christian ladies who plan to go to a
particular mission field to which they are convinced God has called them and
then…He instead plans that they stay home, where they serve God in a way that
is far from “glorious” in human eyes or do quiet work, unnoticed by others—must
consider what they really meant when they dedicated themselves to “full-time”
ministry.
Can there exist a sense of vain glory and the “pride of
life” wrapped up in ambitious notions of surrender? As I examined my own heart, I saw that the esteem of men
had, at times, motivated me even more than the divine wishes of a sovereign
God. It became clear that, instead
of focusing on what I had once heard depicted as “the best life
possible”—meaning one spent as a missionary—or once heard proclaimed “the
highest calling for women”—meaning time spent as a mother—I needed to adjust my
gaze to view the never-changing Savior and embrace all He gives me as good and
perfect gifts from His hand.
Dreams, goals, ambitions, desires—these may be good, but
they are no substitute for meditation upon the sovereign God of the Bible. It is His perfect way (Psalm 18:30)
that we should desire more than our own fictitious world of dedicated
surrender. While giving oneself to
the Lord is merely “reasonable service” (Romans 12:1), imagining that somehow,
because God worked in others’ lives in a certain Christian fairytale-like way,
He will do the same for us, is preposterous, if not sinful. Let us muse more upon the Master and
less upon ministry itself. Let us
substitute the Sovereign for our supposed surrender and abandon ourselves to
this Architect’s blueprint. Truly
“our times are in His hands” (Ps. 31:15).
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