The Great Exchange: How Letting Go Will Lead to Open Spaces and More!

Stephen Cutis Chapman has a wonderful song called 

"Great Expectations".  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKrxg1QDng

It gets me thinking...

What if, for all the dreams we dreamt since we were young, what if those thoughts were the very ones actually blocking us from what God is waiting to give to us?  What if, in turn, we looked at our dream and then placed it on God's altar?  What if we said:

"Take it.   I'm done with it.  Your will be done."

What if we realized that when we finally let go of our dreams, and give them over to God, that He'd give us something better?

Our world today says: "Chase your dreams.  Don't let go."  But, what if letting go is the very thing that God is asking you to do, despite how much you don’t want to do it?

What?  Let go of your dreams?  Scripture is filled with verses that say He'll give you the desires of your heart.  Why would we ever have to let go?

Well, let's flip the coin.  What if the dream you are dreaming is actually leading you in the wrong direction?  Or....

What if your dream is your god?  We usually sacrifice for our work, or give away everything we value just to get to our end goal.  Do we do that for God? 

What if God in Heaven is just waiting for us to stop and give it all to Him? 

What if He is waiting for us to get our identity off the completion of our dreams and into who He says we are?

Whatever the case, surrender could be what He is asking of you.  No doubt, the very thought of potentially surrendering a dream is difficult.  There is no easy in letting go.  I'll be the first to admit, surrender hurts.   

Let's be honest.  When looking head on at both the choice to let go and then the actual act of letting go, it’s no wonder our knees buckle.  Looking straight ahead at both of these massive hurdles forecasts potential devastation. 

However, when looking at the same situation in a hindsight view (verses a straight ahead one), we can surmise that an opposite outcome might occur.   Through the lenses of this different perspective, we can see how letting go gives way to a time of healing, where God can remove what was holding you captive and restore those wounds with Himself.  It is a time of restoration, a time of renewal. 

This act of placing your dream into God’s hands also opens yourself up to new things; things that would not have otherwise been experienced had you not let go.  It’s in this final showdown of will you or won’t you, and you do it, then are healed, that you meet a new friend: open spaces.  Spaces where new terrain begs to be explored.  New parts of you will suddenly bloom like springtime.  

You might even wonder: 

“Where has this been all this time?”  

No doubt, the surprise on your doorstep was just waiting for you… patiently. 

I must admit that I’m a late bloomer in this department (except for Abraham, aren’t many of us??).   I've discovered that I am very thankful for things I've had to let go of AFTER I've gone down the road and seen what God was doing.   Nonetheless, even though my realizations were after the fact, they have still spurred my faith where I can now trust without seeing and let go at an earlier point. 

Belief and obedience are in this mix too.  Through the Holy Spirit, I am empowered to believe in God.  This belief empowers me to trust in Him.  Trusting in Him empowers me to obey what He’s asked me to do.  This obedience empowers me to surrender.  Surrender empowers me to let go. 

So, if the Lord is asking you to place something you treasure on His altar, take heart.  You know the One whom you are giving it to.  He will take care of it the best way possible.

And somehow...

He will provide a ram in the thicket.  He bring good from a terrible situation.  He will make your path straight when direction is hard to come by.  He will provide something better.  These are His promises to us and we know His promises do not fail, though we might, in our intermittent season, feel as such.  Instead of relying and responding to these feelings, hang onto the God who you know will come through for you; even if you are starring a loss in the face.  Believe me, I've been there. Better yet....

Believe Him.  He's been there long before I ever was.  

Furthermore, we know that He will provide something better because He already has: He provided Himself, through His Son Jesus, slayed on Heaven's altar so that we could all have something better... new life, which ultimately is the desire of our heart and His. 

“I Surrender All”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaTXNxUXcn4

Steven Curtis Chapman You Tube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/SCCchannel/featured

Ephesians 1: 11-14 NIV

“In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.  And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.  Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of His glory.”

© Candice Irion.  All Rights Reserved.  

Letting the Heck Go: It will be ok.

Isn’t the act of letting go one of the hardest aspects of life and the lessons we learn? Ugh!  Just getting to the shoreline of saying “OK” and surrendering what our tight fists hang onto is sometimes insurmountable.

But insurmountable isn’t impossible.  

God is walking me through a season of letting go.  It started with going through a series of life transitions and having to go through tons of stuff from my past.  Here, I came upon the realization that I am, indeed, a hoarder.   I hate to admit this as I’ve happily ignored people’s comments for years.   But, alas, they are right.   I don’t like to let things go.

For one, I’m a resourceful person.  I find purpose for items beyond their primary intended use.  So when it is time to throw something away because it no longer serves its initial purpose, I generally keep it because I can use it for something else.

Secondly, I’m as sentimental as they come.  This means every ticket stub, gum wrapper or note is kept in a special box for years.  I guarantee that the majority of the time I’ll remember exactly where the piece came from and enjoy the memories.   It drives others crazy.  It makes me blissfully content. 

But when it comes to people, especially if they are headed in the wrong direction, my hoarding goes by the way side and over-protecting goes into full swing.   I tend to hang on too long in hopes that things will shift the other way.  This gets me in more trouble than it proves to work out. 

How about you?  Do you have a loved one that is making choices that are beyond the protective boundaries of our Christian faith, ethics or morality? Or is there a matter that has come in between you and another that you can’t seem to drop?  I know the feeling!

Holding back the reigns of over-stepping and allowing God do what He needs to do is insanely hard.  Why is this?  We are not their Holy Spirit.  There is only One.   We are not their Savior.  There is only One.  It is God who is orchestrating their testimony, their story.  How can we even try to mess with it?  We all have had our bottom of barrel moments where God rescued us from the depths, which may have been one of our closest times with our Savoir.  Why would we try to interfere with another’s? 

Coming around this mountain yet again (we humans normally have to take several trips around the same dang mountain, don’t we?)  I have found that letting go is a GODLY principle.   Yes.   Both Ps. 81:12 and Romans 1:21 discuss that when people refuse His way that He lets their stubborn hearts go to their own devices.   Christ did the same thing in John 6:60-70.  Where in a moment, He, who has the ability to say exactly the right thing that would have lead the people leaving the faith to return, KEPT QUIET.  He let them go.   In Ezekiel 33: 7-9 God points out that the responsibility of heeding instruction falls upon the receiver, not the giver. 

I’m at the point of struggling so much with letting people go to their own devices (because the mother hen in me wants to save them from future despair) that I have to surmise that it is only in God’s power that I’ll find the ability to let go.   Just like finding strength in Him to forgive another, I need to depend on that same power to allow a person to go. 

Granted, the people I’m talking about are capable of making their own choices.  They aren’t disabled or in state, condition or at an age where they are unable to decide on their own.   No.   They are in fact grown and have a full mind to reason and live their life.  It is there God given choice.  Who am I to take that away? 

Child rearing crosses some of these lines as well.   There are far too many points of instruction where a child must learn that there are consequences to their actions and it is the parent’s responsibility to let the child experience what they need to (within reason) so they can implement the same in life. 

So, after these evaluations, I took a deep dive and asked myself questions on why I couldn’t let this person/matter go.  I feel that God’s Spirit prompted me with a couple of stepping stones that you might find helpful as well.

1.  What do I fear?

2.  Who do I trust?

What do I fear?  I fear a person getting so far down the wrong path that they won’t be able to turn back.  I fear that they may hurt so deeply from self inflicted stupidity that they will be at the bottom of the barrel and encounter tons of pain.  

I’ve encountered pain of my own doing and pain of another’s.  Either way, I don’t wish that on anyone.  It’s hell!

Then, a sub-question arose.  What is my belief on pain?  Pain is awful!!!  Sheer horribleness of every degree- especially when it could be avoided.

But isn’t pain also a teaching tool?  Isn’t it where God meets us every single time?  How sweet are the Scriptures that says a person cried out and God heard them?  How cherished are those moments where we remember crying out and having the Creator of the Universe love us so much to step in?  Thus, pain has its benefit too, for it is here that we find grace.  We find mercy.  We find love.

Look at the story of the Prodigal; one of the most exalted passages focused on God bringing a stubborn child home.  Doesn’t that passage describe both you and I and is it possibly one of the most meaningful and relatable passages we have?

Let’s face it.  We are humans who fall short constantly.  We need these passages.  We need to know that in light of our failures, there is a saving hand there for us.  We need to know the God who stands with us in our pain.   This is how we come to fully experience and know grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope for ourselves because with God, pain will be used for good.  We can trust this because we can trust God.

After all, things turned out ok for Paul, didn’t they?  Wasn’t he the dude on the rampage murdering Christians?  Wasn’t he the ferocious guy who was wicked and cruel? God work things out for Paul, in spite of Paul’s actions, didn’t He?  Yes, He did.  Course, we in our super-ego human minds might say Paul was on the wrong path.  But, from a spiritual mindset, seeing how God works all things together for the good of who He’s called for His purposes (Rom. 8:28), we could also say that Paul was where he was supposed to be all along.   This was, after all, God’s story of how Paul came to salvation.  It is how God choose to demonstrate that He can take the most vile and make them an apostle.  My goodness, how that story has ministered to countless other sinister souls and brought them to faith!  Thus, we must trust God’s story above what we dictate is bad and let go so grace can do the dirty work.  

Next question.

Who do I trust?  Honestly speaking, isn’t our default that we trust ourselves more than anyone, even more than God?  Many times don’t our actions prove that we trust our timing and what we think is best more so than our Savior?  Yuuup! 

Last time I checked, it was God’s timing that was and still is perfect.  It is His hand that is capable to save, not ours.  It is His voice that can say the right thing at the right time in the right tone.  Again, not ours.

So, friend, while we aim to save our loved one from themselves, only our Savior can do that.   We should just chill out and realize we have to let folks go.  We have to get out of the way and trust that God will find them on their path.   He knows right where they are much more than we ever could, because He understands their heart.  He created them.  He knows what to do. 

Let us also remember that this is HIS story of HIS salvation for HIS chosen ones.  Let us trust Him far above ourselves and get the heck out of the way.   Incidentally, we ought to refocus our saving tactics on our own selves.

Pause. 

I wonder…

What are others having to tell me fifty million times that I’ve developed a stubborn or callous heart too? 

What are others having struggle to let go of because I simply won’t listen, heed and act? 

What have I ignored?

Hm.

Like a download on a computer, my laundry list of items adds up surprisingly fast.   The old take the log out of your own eye principle, I suppose.

And as I refocus my efforts on my own stubbornness and let go of others, I find that I have the mind-space to tackle these issues.   Kinda like spring cleaning in a way. 

I guess that is why the hoarding of things or thoughts can be so debilitating for it builds “stuff” up in our minds, hearts and homes.  We get so cluttered with other’s situations, that we can’t see the real issues in our own lives which could reap destruction if not taken care of now. 

So, take heart.  God is at work in your life.  Let go.  Let Him.  Refocus on your log.  And remember… what seems insurmountable is not impossible with God.

© Candice Irion.  All Rights Reserved.