“Closed fists and white knuckles”

 

I’m still trying to bring down The Elephant in the Room.

 

“Sometimes people and things can become too important to us. We grip them with closed fists and white knuckles,” Chuck Swindoll writes, “and God has to pry open our fingers to loosen our hold. Perhaps that’s how it was between Abraham and Isaac.” (Abraham, The Friend of God)

 

Swindoll also writes:

 

“There are times when we look up full-hearted and prayerfully say, “O, Lord, in this crisp, clear, beautiful moment, You have everything that I own. You have all of me. There is nothing, nothing that I hold back.”

 

“It’s amazing how soon after those times of commitment God seems to require something sacred in our lives that puts us to the test.”

 

I know what he means. In a recent post, and in Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa I wrote of my grief over God’s request to leave my kids (and future grandkids) and move to Africa—and yet . . .

 

. . . And yet, I thought of the times I had felt God’s tug, and the accompanying pain in my heart, while I sang the words—sincerely, I thought—“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life my all.” (When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason)

 

Had I really meant those words?

 

My all? Even my children?

 

While God waited for my answer, I thought about the summer of my 15th year when our youth director challenged us to commit our lives one hundred percent to God. A few kids went forward but I remained in my chair, weighing what that commitment might entail.

 

I recognized I could neither see into the future nor fully comprehend God’s ways, and yet, after a few minutes of intense thought and prayer, I stood and walked forward. I really meant it—at the time.

 

And now God was offering me an opportunity to see if I still really meant it.

 

Though I didn’t understand it at the time, God was offering me a gift, offering to bring my faith, trust, and love for Him to a higher, deeper, broader level.

 

Accepting His gift, however, meant I had to sort through my entangled loyalties.

 

Recently I ran across notes I took while listening to Chuck Swindoll’s radio program around that time:

 

“God might be saying, ‘I want the Isaac of your life, without reservation, and I will show you step by step why I want your Isaac. You struggle because you’re unwilling to give God something you cherish. God wants first place in your life so He can arrange it the way He wants and so that you may be supremely happy.”

 

That “supremely happy” Chuck referenced has nothing to do with worldly happiness, material possessions, status, a guaranteed income, a comfortable life, an easy life, or even safety from dangers.

 

It has everything to do with the happiness that comes from letting God have first place in our lives—as much as we are humanly able.

 

We cannot love Him perfectly, 

we cannot give Him first place in our lives perfectly, 

but God knows that we’re mere humans 

and is quick to extend us His mercy and grace. 

He’s looking not for perfect people, 

but for people after His own heart. 

(Click on Becoming A Man or Woman After God’s Own Heart; 

see also 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22.)

 

More on this next week. We’ve almost wrestled that elephant to the ground!

 

Our entangling, conflicting loyalties

“I am Yours, God. Take me and use me.”

 

“I’ll live my life for You. I’ll do anything You ask.”

 

“I love You more than anything else.”

 

“All I am and all I have—Lord I give them all to You.”

 

You and I sing words like those, and sometimes pray them, but do we really mean them?

 

Jesus taught, in Luke 9, that when we say we’ll follow Him, we must first count the cost.

 

He resolutely set out for Jerusalem and, on the way, met three men.

 

“The three different levels of commitment represented in people He met along the way,” writes Lloyd John Ogilvie, “expose the ways many Christians relate to their discipleship today.” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

Man #1 promised he’d follow Jesus wherever He went. Ogilvie says the man “made a grand, pious commitment that went no deeper than words.”

 

In reply, Jesus challenged him, as if to ask, “Oh, really?” He no doubt recognized the man’s emotional enthusiasm and naiveté, so He pointed out that He didn’t have a home—not even a place to lay His head. It was as if Jesus asked, “Are you sure you want to live that way?”

 

Jesus said that because those who follow Him must live in sacrificial ways, they need to count the cost—realistically.

 

When Jesus invited Man #2 to follow as a disciple, the man said that first he wanted to bury his father.

 

Some Bible scholars suggest the man’s father might have still been alive; if so, he could’ve waited years before setting out to follow Jesus. Others surmise the man’s father had only recently died.

 

Either way, no doubt Jesus recognized the man’s commendable commitment to his family but cautioned him to recognize his priorities. He had what Ogilvie calls “a secondary loyalty” that “kept him tied to his past.”

 

Ogilvie writes, “In substance, Christ said, ‘Forget the past; follow Me!’ We dare not misinterpret His words to suggest a lack of concern for life’s obligations, but rather a call to be concerned about His call to live rather than worry about what is dead and past.”

 

Man #3 agreed to be a disciple but first, he wanted to say goodbye to his family. Ogilvie calls him a man with “competing loyalties.” We’re to seek and serve God first. We must count the cost of doing so.

 

Discipleship involves extreme demands. Clear priorities. Radical commitment.

 

In Luke 14:27-28, Jesus said, “You cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me. But don’t begin until you count the cost” (NLT).

 

Little did I know then, before going to Africa, that I would 

meet numerous colleagues who counted the cost realistically, 

people who followed God to extremely demanding locales and tasks, 

people who held on through thick and thin.

 

And they did it without complaining!

 

That’s clear priorities. That’s radical commitment.

 

Jesus knew human nature so well—He said, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow,” in other words, whoever gets started as a disciple, “and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 NLT).

 

Conflicting loyalties, commitments, and obligations pull many of us in directions away from where God longs for us to go.

 

“We have one hand on the plow of discipleship,” Ogilvie writes, “and the other reaching back to the past or to lesser commitments. In what ways are you looking back?”

 

“What entangling loyalties,” he asks, “. . . make it difficult to give your whole mind and heart and will to Christ?”

 

That was the question I had to wrestle with before I was willing to relocate to Africa.

 

God was asking me to let go of my kids and place them in His hands,

and then asking me to die to the dreams and plans I had

as mother to my kids

and grandmother to their kids.

 

What He was asking of me left me stunned, broken.

  

 

Assuming our love for God is ENOUGH and our grip on family and dreams is loose ENOUGH

We North Americans build our lives around our homes, possessions, spouses, children, friends, careers, income, health insurance, retirement plans, bank accounts, investments, dreams, and plans for the future. 

We call it pursuing “The American Dream.” 

If someone or something threatens our pursuit, we get mad, fall apart, feel victimized, cry “Unfair!” and feel cheated out of our rights. 

God asks us, however, to hold them loosely, and for good reason—so that He can occupy first place in our lives. 

Both the Old Testament and New Testament tell us: 

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, Deuteronomy 6:4-5). 

The Message puts it this way: “Love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.” 

Usually, we estimate that our love for God is enough and that our grip on loved ones, treasures, and dreams is loose enough. 

But because God’s ways and thoughts are so different 

and so much higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9), 

sometimes He whispers, “Your grip is still too tight.” 

God isn’t mean-spirited. No, the point is this: He has something better for us, something that would leave us utterly amazed, things we wouldn’t believe even if we were told (Habakkuk 1:5).

But God lets us decide 

whether we want His something better. 

Sometimes, to help us decide, God puts us to the test, for both His sake and ours. Our decisions reveal to God—and to us, if we’re willing—the status of our faith in, and commitment to, Him. 

God put many of our heroes and mentors to the test, including our dear Old Testament role model, Abraham.  

God asked him to do the incomprehensible—unthinkable—unimaginable: He asked Abraham to place his beloved son, Isaac, on an altar and sacrifice him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:1-2).  

Do you think Abraham staggered at the request? I do. 

Abraham played a key role in my eventual willingness to leave my very-young adult children and move to Africa, but let me hasten to make this clear: Unlike God’s request of Abraham, God wasn’t asking me to put my children to death. 

It took a while to figure out what God was asking of me and my kids, but here’s what I slowly began to understand: 

God was asking me to let go of my kids 

and place them in His hands, 

and then asking me to die to 

the dreams and plans I had as mother to my kids 

and grandmother to their kids. 

And yes, I staggered at God’s request. 

Back then, before I began to see more clearly what God was up to, He and I were in a monumental battle of the wills. He was pointing me toward Africa, but I was digging in my heels. 

In most situations, I wouldn’t have put up such a fight, but when it came to what was best for my kids—well, that was a different story. 

I felt no peace—none!—about leaving them. I just couldn’t shake the belief that they needed their parents to help them transition out of college and into adulthood. 

Those were dark days: It felt like God was asking me to walk away from my kids before I had finished the job He had given me: to raise them—and raise them well. 

Everything within me cried out that it wasn’t right! 

At the same time, I was not at peace about stomping my foot and saying “No!” to God. 

I needed to reorient my thinking, to recognize that God was offering me His something better. 

In coming weeks we’ll ponder what God asked Abraham to do, and why, but for now, what about you? 

Is God asking you to do something incomprehensible, unthinkable, unimaginable?  

Are you staggering from the enormity of it all? 

Could it be that He is asking you to give up to Him your best so He can give you His better? Something that will leave you utterly amazed, things you wouldn’t believe even if you were told? (Habakkuk 1:5)