“My next 46 years” I jotted on page 50, paragraph three of Lysa Tyrkeurst’s What Happens When Women Say Yes to God. After two and half years I can say, it has certainly been and STILL IS quite a process to live by these words:
If we hold all we treasure with our hands open and our palms facing upward, we are telling God we recognize it is His and we offer it freely up to Him. God may or may not remove what we’ve offered Him, but He will continue to fill our open hands with blessings – His amazing blessings – and not the cheap counterfeits of the world.
Sometimes, I have to physically open up my hands, stare at them, meditate on the “treasure” or perhaps a problem, turn my meditation to the Lord, relinquish control, and release it to Him. Do I trust Him with my children? With the big as well as the little details I work so hard to orchestrate in life? Do I believe that He will, in fact, work things out for good? There is something in me that just wants to fix it all, reason it all out, and be an overall more ‘active participant,’ so to speak, in God’s plan than He has meant for me to be. Often, this leads to anxiety and disappointment and sometimes to outright disobedience.
It is easy enough to sing “I surrender all . . . all to thee my blessed savior. . .” but another thing to live it! Lysa TerKeurst hit the nail on the head for me once again when she said –
“Our Job Is Obedience;
God’s Job Is Everything Else”
Psalm 37:3-5 tells us “Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this.” In John 14:1, Jesus gave His disciples a command, “Let not your hearts be troubled . . .” (NIV). Obeying the word in these instances doesn’t allow
me to keep a tight grip. And, what about, “Casting all your cares upon Him…”?? Again, open hands are required! I can’t cast the care and also try to take care of it myself.
In Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, he points out that Psalm 37:8 says, “Do not fret; it only leads to evil” (NIV). He asserts that perfect trust in the Father doesn’t allow us to worry. You can read the entire devotional here: https://utmost.org/modern-classic/one-of-gods-great-donts/
A few of his main points concerning fretting include:
- Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to Him.
- We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are an indication of how really wise we are.
- Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way.
- All our fret and worry is caused by “calculating” without God.
I don’t want to displease my Lord by holding on too tightly to my cares, by controlling, by fretting. All my treasures came from Him anyway, and He surely knows infinitely more about solving my problems than I do. Help us, Lord, to truly surrender all!
– Heather Cornett
