Letting Go and Letting God...

Letting go and letting God…

There’s a line in chapter one of “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cymbala, that says, “I discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him.”

This is such a difficult spot for many of us, and has been for me for a really long time. I’ve told many of you that I’ve been very “capable” for so long; very “good” at what I do for such a long time, that “letting go and letting God” has been one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn to do.

And especially for men, who, by nature, are often “fixers”, it is often even that much harder. It is so easy to bury ourselves in planning and details and busy-ness as we trudge onward in all our plans and goals and work that we often plan God right out of the equation. And having done so for so long, learning to do otherwise is not only hard, it can be downright scary for many of us, who may have come to believe all the results we have ever seen in the church for lo these many years have been (this is so ludicrous, but we often believe it) the result of OUR own doing, that we’re actually reluctant to turn it over to God, believing He might not be able to accomplish as much as we have.

How silly, how preposterous, how full of arrogance and pride. The fact is, we have been holding God back, we’ve kept the church smaller than God would have made it were it not for our feeble attempts. What we have today is the church like we want it, not as God would have it. We create a church that WE are comfortable with, that WE can control, that makes US comfortable.

Why do you think the religious leaders of the day were so upset with Jesus? Because He dared to suggest re-creating the church in a completely different way, a way with which they were VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. Needless to say, a way in which THEY would have had MUCH LESS control.

So we go on, day after day, creating church in a way we can control it, reluctant to let go and let God have his way, either with US, or with His church. And then we have the audacity to moan and complain about the state of the church.

Is there a solution? Sure. Will we like it? Not at first. No sir. Because it will make us very uncomfortable. Because you will feel like you’re going down the expressway in the back seat of the car and you won’t be able to see the driver. (It’s the Holy Spirit, and He’s invisible, but that doesn’t mean He’s not there. You just have to look at the results! ) We have to learn to live by faith, not by sight, and that includes the way in which we build the church.

The astonishing truth is that God is attracted to weakness in the way we do church. If we would just sit down, back up, back off, take our hands off the wheel long enough to say, “Lord, I can’t do this. I’ve been trying for so long, I’ve made a royal mess of this. It doesn’t even look like it’s supposed to look. No one does what they’re supposed to do. No one wins the lost. We argue about the silliest things. We’re not controlled by the Holy Spirit. We don’t pray like we should. We have forgotten what we’re supposed to be about. I can’t do this by myself. I’m tired. I’m beaten down. I am weak. I need your help.”

And then, if we’d KEEP our hands off the wheel, our knees on the ground, our hearts open to Him, I wonder what we’d see? In “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire”, they found out God knows how, and has the power to build his church, and he WANTS to.

The question is, do WE want Him to? I do. It’s my prayer. Will you join me?

I confess, Lord. I’m weak. I can’t do it. I need you. Come quickly, Lord, come quickly… There’s work to do and I confess I cannot do it without you. My weakness is evident and I readily admit it. I don’t want to build it without you any more. Come fix what I’ve messed up. Come build your church. Show us your power.

kl