I Give Up!
(Thoughts on when you are tired of obeying)
I’m realizing that if I am growing tired of obeying God, I have been obeying in my own strength. My frustrations with God, I realize, have less to do with God and more to do with me. There is this strange dance I preform that involves me surrendering myself to the way of God, only to lower my arms and hold onto myself tighter. Let go, pick up, let go, pick up, so the pattern goes.
This has to stop.
This back and forth dance must be what the Bible talks about with an double-minded man (James 1) unstable in all he does. Surely this will drive a person crazy. I do want I don’t want to do and I don’t do what I want to do. The good news is this: I don’t think God asks me to surrender on my own. Perhaps my strength is as fickle as my decision making.
That’s it! (Insert lightbulb here)
This whole time I thought that my surrender had to come from my own efforts. When really, my surrender comes from God’s unending power enabling me to do so. Every time I lay my life down and pick it back up, I am relying on my own ability. Only Christ in me can sustain my surrender. Only Christ in me can empower me to obey when everything in me doesn’t want to.
I have one job: to abide in Christ.
He will handle the rest.
- Louis