Growing In God...Giving God What Is His

       “I don’t want to, or I don’t know how to give it to God. I want God to just take it from me.”  Oh, I have said those words so many times in my life.

      If we really think about it, we don’t want God to just take it from us—if we give something we have freely given it and we don’t feel a sense of loss, instead we feel a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction; however, if something is taken from us we feel a sense of loss and as though we have been wronged or an injustice has been done to us. God is not an unjust God.

        The reason we have to give it to Him is because, first of all, He is a gentleman and He won’t take it forcefully from us, and second, because that is how we grow in our personal relationship with Him. He wants to know that we are willing to give it to Him.

       Relationships are give and take, we all know that, but it must be a reality in our lives. We give Him our pain, our insecurities, our fears, our hopes and dreams too, and He takes those things we give to Him and in exchange He gives us His peace, His help, His guidance, His promises and His blessings.

 I’m learning that there is no sense at all in trying to build walls or have things in my life that separate me and God.  He already knows my heart and everything in it, so if I don’t give my entire heart to Him it is going to cause me problems in my walk with Him and in this new life He is creating for me. 1 Samuel 16:7 (NKJV) “...for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” He knows our heart and the intent of it at all times, and a wall does just that, it separates us from Him!

    

     Maybe we are struggling to know His plan for our lives, or maybe we are struggling to give Him our pain of being hurt in the past. For many there are issues of forgiveness. There is a spiritual battle going on and the enemy doesn’t want you to know that you can give everything to God. And not only can we give it to God, but we are instructed in 1 Peter 5:7 to give our cares to Him. Also, Psalm 55:22 (NKJV) says “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.”  Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Jesus is so serious about us giving Him our cares, concerns and worries that the last part of chapter 6 of Matthew is Him telling us that God our Father feeds and clothes everything in creation and that we are so special to Him that of course He will also do it for us, the very ones He loves the most.  But we must not worry and we must spend our time and attention furthering the kingdom of God. He wants us to look to Him for everything; He is Jehovah Jireh, our provider.

     Oh, so we give Him our worries and concerns and He gives us all our needs met, both spiritual and physical, sounds like a great deal to me!

     I still struggle with this. I still have a hard time with pushing on, pressing through, and walking in victory. And sometimes I feel like an infant who still needs to be weaned off the milk and start learning how to eat the solid food of God’s word and His ways. And yet, there are other times when I feel so grown in Him and full of Him that nothing could stop my progress.

      As with everything in life, and it is no different in this new life in Christ, there are highs and lows, but they are really what make this life exciting. Waiting and trusting in the Lord to see how He is going to help you get through this next step can (if you let it) start to become exhilarating as your thoughts and prayers go one way and His answers come in another.

     Remember, His ways are not our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 (NKJV), “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” That statement and those verses used to confuse me and make angry—then I realized I wouldn’t want to serve a God whose ways were my ways—what a mess that would be. The reason for the confusion and anger was because I thought that meant He couldn’t or didn’t really know me, but just the opposite is the truth. It means He knows what is best for me.

     I know that even when I don’t think I am growing in the things of God that if I am just obedient to the Lord and what He is guiding and leading me to do, I will be able to look back on my life and see “God’s signature all over it” and realize that in fact I was growing and that was God moving.

     Growing in Him doesn’t always happen in the way we think it should.  Sometimes we come to realize we have grown in an area that we didn’t even know we needed to grow in. I love my Abba Father and that He does that for me, He knows me better than I know myself and He sees and knows what I need or don’t need long before I ever do...”For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”(Matthew 6:8 NKJV)

     I may not know what my need is and I may be seeking Him about or for one thing and suddenly I find myself in a test or trial I thought I had already overcome. That is when I sense the Holy Spirit—something wants my heart’s attention. My heart senses a need I didn’t know I had.

  

     

     That is what this new life is all about. Learning how to give God what is His. YOU.  You and everything about you is what God wants. You are His and He knows what is best for you and remember He has great plans for you (Jeremiah 29:11), and you can trust God.

      It’s like anything else in this new life with our Lord and Savior, we have to walk it out, we have to live in it or it will lose its effectiveness in our life.  We have to experience Jesus and our freedom through Him every day, all day long, if we don’t we will be opening ourselves up for the old patterns and behaviors, and we may begin to let go of the transformation God has already done in us.

      I have walked away from God before, it is not something I’m proud of, BUT GOD, uses everything we go through to bring glory to Him and to help us to grow and draw closer to Him and He showed me that even during that time He Never Left Me! I can even draw strength from my backslidden days—it helps me now when I am tempted to give in and give up. I can remember those days when I tried to do life on my own and how messed up it got, and I am able to remember and realize that I was not better off without God, I was in fact miserable. Praise God that He is forever married to the backslidden heart. “Return, O backsliding children,” says the Lord, “for I am married to you.” (Jeremiah 3:14 NKJV) He loves us enough to let us go if we think He isn’t the answer, and He patiently waits while we learn valuable lessons about trying to walk away from The Truth after having walked in it.

     One of the valuable lessons I learned was that I can get as close to Him as I want to, and I can also get as far away from Him as I want. He patiently waits for us to see that without Him we cannot do this thing called life, nor do we want to, now that we have known the power of truth. But, we must remember that yes He is waiting for us to come back to Him, but He knows that we are creating consequences for ourselves while we are denying Him. Galatians 6:7 (NKJV) “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” This is the thing, you have as you know, your free will and you can walk away from God because He always and forever loves us, but He will not force us to love Him. But walking away from Him can mean some very serious consequences or “reaping” even once we have come back to Him.

     My years away from Him were the years of my life that I went to addiction and tried to fill myself with the things that are temporal and people who never cared for or loved me. Those were years of sowing a life of sin that affected a lot of people in my life who are still suffering the reaping of my sowing. Like the quote says, “No man is an island entire of itself...” what we do affects a lot of people around us.

     Let’s live like we know we do affect others, and now instead of making people in our lives mop up the mess of our mistakes let’s shower them in the overflow of the blessings of God in our lives. They will take notice, I promise.

     Give yourself to God, give all of you to Him and don’t hold back because if you give everything and all of yourself to Him you will grow in God and that’s what this new life in Him is all about. 

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