Not With Pebbles

EXPECTATIONS

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        |  }--------- DISAPPOINTMENT

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   REALITY

Ever feel the disparity?
I was convicted in this past week's sermon when Pastor Jason said that God's plans often seem to go against our expectations. Does this mean that I am often disappointed with God? For me, that is what it has meant lately. Although I don't like to admit it and I didn't see that in myself till that sermon, it was kind of God to show it to me.

When God's plans are not your plans, is it not so easy to just wish that He had the same agenda as you? To wish that he would take away pain when you wanted it to be taken away, to wish that he would give you a certain relationship sooner, even to wish that he would just hurry up in giving you contentment? Though the things we wish for may be good, when you see this impatience in yourself, does it not tell you something is wrong? Does not this impatience, even in having more of a hunger for God, which is one of the best desires you can have, undermine the process of waiting? The full surrender to God's time table? When we hold impatience, we steal from ourselves the joy of surrender. Surrender takes impatience's place when we lift up empty hands to God and ask Him to fill them with whatever He will, while also asking him for the strength to be thankful for whatever he gives us in his good plan and his good time. Impatience, discontentment, and lack of joy do not have to rule you. Did Jesus not die for even this?

God has been gently bringing me to a point of surrendering more and more radically things that I have held on to for a long time. A few nights ago, he gave me the peace I needed to completely give to him hopes for the future and thoughts that I had obsessed over for too long. I wrote a letter, surrendering specific dreams of mine to him and then burned it as I sang worship songs that re-calibrated my heart to trust. I needed that.

He had brought me to the pier overlooking his goodness and had asked me if I would let go of the pebbles I held on to, all of my plans and my dreams for me. I had looked out over his goodness and asked, "But Daddy, will I ever see these pebbles again?" 

He had said to me, "Daughter, I will never ask you to do anything that will not give you more of Me." 

"But Daddy, these are my favorite pebbles. I don't know what I will do without them." As I began to cry, he had lifted my chin to look into his gentle face, wiped my tears, and smiled. 

"Trust me, dear heart. I AM Enough."

Slowly, I had reached out my hand over the pier and dropped each pebble, one by one, into the vast ocean. Piece by piece, I had watched that letter burn. I knew that there were more pebbles in the bottom of the ocean and that inevitably there were better ones.

My Savior stepped into the water and reached out his hand to me. "You have chosen what is better. And now, with your hands that are empty of your idols, will you take my hand and explore My goodness?" Did it really matter that there may be better pebbles in his ocean? My Father had called me, me, to explore his goodness with him and I couldn't swim with pebbles. "Please, Daddy," I said. "I want to follow You." 

The last letters were consumed in the fire and as I sang, "Like a bride waiting for her groom, we'll be a church ready for you..." I rubbed the ashes of my surrender into the cement until there was not a single raised flake. I wanted to be rid of any desires that were keeping me from following my Savior out onto the water, keeping me from taking his hand and exploring his goodness. Tears mingled with ashes, and yet I felt a freedom. Freedom that I had longed for. I felt in my heart that Jesus was stronger than even my desires for anything but him. He was drawing his child to himself yet again.

Dear reader, surrender is harder than you can know and sweeter than you will ever be able to imagine. And your Savior calls you out into the water explore His goodness. What are the pebbles that keep you from taking his hand in full surrender? Believe, dear heart, that there is so much better in his ocean. But praise God, you will not make it to those better gifts until you have plumbed the depths of his goodness with him!