Pastor's Reflections: Willingness

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Jeff Lampl

Mary said, "I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to do whatever he wants.

May everything you said come true."

Luke 1:38 (TLB)

But Paul answered, "Why are you crying and breaking my heart?

I am not only willing to be put in jail for the Lord Jesus.

I am even willing to die for him in Jerusalem!"

Acts 21:13 (CEV)

On the Sunday before last I compared total surrender to the Lord to wedding vows. Total surrender is not like getting a set of marching orders and trying by your own effort to follow them to a "t". Rather total surrender is more like wedding vows and living them out in marriage, where perfection is not the goal, rather sustained relationship and loyalty to your spouse "until death do you part" is goal.

No spouse carries out vows perfectly, no spouse is the quintessence or epitome of loyalty, no spouse fails to fail the other somehow, sometime. No spouse is ever without need of forgiveness and restoration of relationship with the other. In this way, no spouse has to live feeling like a failure in marriage because success in marriage is not measured by doing everything right, rather by staying in the marriage, forgiving, receiving forgiveness, continually starting over, recognizing that it isn't the quality of my love that holds the marriage together, rather it is the strength of my marriage that makes my love such that it can be continually renewed.

Our total commitment to the Lord is like that but with one huge difference. In my "weddedness" to the Lord, it is His faithfulness to me that holds our "wedded eternal surrender to one another" together (Yes it all started with the surrender of His life for the rescue of mine).

In other words I am safe in surrendering my life to Him. Safe from the need for self-condemnation. Safe from the need to feel the debilitating guilt of failing Him or breaching loyalties. Personally I am fully aware that I do fail Christ. I know that I am a terrible spouse of His, yet in all my failures, my desire to love Him better grows and even becomes more effective as I come to experience more and more deeply His faithfulness to me.

Therefore, back to the prayer of yesterday's post

"I pray that I do not even desire to be secure (in this world),

to be in control (of my life or the lives of others),

nor to be esteemed by men."

That prayer implies a willingness that I must cultivate. Perhaps the kind of willingness that sets us free to live on the things of heaven is captured in the following prayer.

"Lord, I am willing to pray 'teach me the lessons I need to learn that decouple me from the securities provided by job or any other earthly attachment.

"Lord I am willing to relinquish any, any at all, any holding on to control in my job, control over what I want, control in my family, anywhere in my life. Show me Lord the difference between my needing control and the responsibility you have given me to be a humble steward of that with which you have entrusted me.

"Lord I am willing, by whatever means you determine, to live on the fuel of Your esteem me, regardless of achievements, successes or "wins".

Lord I am willing to accept the loss of the "esteem of men" on which so much of my life has been based

Lord I am willing to enter the new world of living the so very foreign but so very freeing words of Psalm 23:1

"Because You are my Shepherd, I have everything I need"

Amen

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