Without faith...

Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend who was really struggling with his failures. No matter how hard he tried, he felt like his life didn't measure up to those around him. They were more successful, they had steady employment, they maybe had families and he was struggling with his lack of those things. Consequently he was having a hard time believing that God loved Him or God wanted to be in His life. Truly I could relate to what he was saying. Sometimes when I try really hard at something and it never seems to work for me I feel like I am no good, a failure. Actually it gets worse. I feel like God doesn't care or God doesn't love me. Why is it not working for me but it is for everyone else? Well the truth is most everyone else is probably struggling too but that doesn't take away my pain. It didn't take away my friend's pain to know that others were not as successful as he saw them.

Well I felt like the Lord gave me a word for him. In the Bible it says that without faith it's impossible to please God. What that means is that no matter how hard we try to please God by our actions, and those things are important and often do please God, we will not please Him unless we believe Him. You see, you can be a success from the world's perspective and a failure from God's but the other can also be true. You can fail at many things in the world but still be pleasing to God because you have faith. As I thought about that I wondered what it is that God wants me to believe in order to please Him? Obviously we must believe that we need Him, our sin separates us from Him and that Christ as God came to forgive us and save us. But immediately there were some other things that were pressed on my heart.

When we are in the midst of failure in our lives, or even in a storm or difficult time in our lives, it pleases God when we take Him at His Word and believe that He knows our frailties, our flaws and our failures and yet He cares for us and He will never leave us. It pleases Him when we believe Him that our worth is not found in how successful we are in the eyes of others, but rather our worth is found in how much God treasures us in spite of our failures! It pleases Him to know we believe Him and trust Him that all things are under His control. I told my friend, it pleases God to know that you love Him and trust Him even when He has given you a harder life that many and maybe you have more setbacks than most. My friend struggles with some disabilities that have adversely affected his life.

So this morning I don't want you to be overwhelmed by the pain of failure. I want you instead, by faith, to believe in the goodness of God! Believe Him that He knows your pain and hurt and He cares. And go one step further and trust Him that He is at work in your life for His glory and your ultimate good. Pick yourself up and press on. If you failed in something you were trying to do, then consider that God's leading in another direction. If you failed the Lord in some area of obedience, repent, confess your sin and then get back to following the Lord. Remember, without faith it is impossible to please God. Our failures do not diminish His love for us.

The Surrendered Life

I think as long as I can remember I grew up singing the song "I surrender all." In case you don't remember it the words are easily sung; "I surrender all to Jesus, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him in His presence daily live. I surrender all! I surrender all! All to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all!" I can't remember when I quit singing it but somewhere along the line I recognized that I could not sing that in good faith. It's so easy to say or sing, "I surrender all" but actually surrendering the things we care about the most is very, very hard. When I do sing the song today I change the words to "Help me surrender all..." You can imagine that changing the word "I" for "Help me" is a mouth full and doesn't sing very well but at least I am being honest.

I'm not sure what we think of when we think of surrender to the Lord. Truthfully I guess most of the time we are not putting anything specific in our minds represented by the word "all." Some of the easier surrenders are money. Most unbelievers think that all the church wants, and maybe by extension, all God wants is their money. But it is not really your money that is hard to surrender. Maybe a bit harder is the thought of surrendering our time. For many of us our time is more valuable than our money. We treasure it more. But truthfully I think the hardest thing to surrender to God are our dreams. What do you dream of in this life? What would you like to see happen with your life? For some of us it's the American dream-- a life of financial ease and all the pleasures that will bring. For others it might be the freedom to do what I want and go where I will. For still others of us its a relationship that we dream of. When we start thinking about surrender as the surrender of our dreams to God surrender takes on a whole new dimension.

But the truth is the Christian life is about surrendering all of who I am to all of who God is and that means bringing my dreams under subjection to His will, His desires for my life. But oh how hard it is! I think of Jesus struggling over this very issue in the garden of Gethsemane the night he is to be arrested and then die on a cross. So agonizing was His emotional pain than the Bible says the capillaries in his skin burst and He was sweating drops of blood. We must never think that surrender is easy or something to be taken lightly. Surrender is painful even when we muster enough faith to trust God and take Him at His Word that His Will will in the end be the best.

For a long time I have known that God is asking me to surrender a dream to Him. Actually it's not just a dream but it is my only dream. I guess since I was a very young man I have only had one real dream and God is asking me for it. He's been asking me for some time, maybe all my life, do you love me more than your dream? One thing about God is he really doesn't like any competition. He expects to be number one but if I'm honest he has a right to that spot. He's my creator and He's a creator who loves me and actually cares for me greatly. So much so that he lowered Himself to be my Savior. He suffered greatly that I might know His love for me and now invites me to be a part of His family-- to be in relationship with Him that will be eternal and beyond anything I imagine. He has a right to first place in my heart though I struggle with giving it to Him.

What really makes it hard is that I see Him give my dream to others! Why can they have it and not me? I guess that is a question I will have to ask Him at a later date-- for now it's "Do you love me more than your dream? Can you surrender to Me?"

So Lord Jesus, I say as I have for a long time now, "Help me surrender all. Help me ever love and trust you and in your presence daily live."