Letting Go....

What would you say has affected your life more than anything else as a Christian? What has made the greatest impact on your walk with the Lord?

There are probably hundreds of individual answers to this question, but for me, the thing that has changed my life more than anything else after being a Christian for over 40 years is knowing how to give things over to God and being able to leave them there. Knowing how to surrender my "self" to Him so that He can love His Love through me affects every choice that I make. This simple discovery has impacted my life more than anything else, because it's really the "key" to the abundant Life!

Most of us, as believers, understand that we have God's Love (or His Life) in our hearts. But how many of us, in all honesty, really experience that Love of God out in our everyday lives - in our marriages, in our relationships and in our workplace? We all talk about experiencing His Love, we write about it and we sing about it, but how many of us are really living an abundant love-filled life?

There's a huge difference between simply knowing that we possess God's Love in our hearts and actually experiencing that Love in our lives . The key to doing this, I believe, is understanding how to relinquish ourselves over to the Lord (becoming open and cleansed vessels) on a daily and moment-by-moment basis. Then, His Love from our hearts can flow out into our lives.

Exactly how we do this is what I to explore over the next few meditations.

Matthew 24

One of the most provocative verses in all of Scripture, I believe, is Matthew 24:12, which tells us that in the end times (just before Christ returns), one of the things that will be very apparent is that the "love of many will grow cold."

Now, the interesting thing about this verse is that the Greek word for "love" here is Agape, which means God's supernatural unconditional love. Therefore, this passage is referring to His children - people who have God's Love in their hearts. It's saying that in the end times something is going to happen to that Love of God in His children’s hearts that will cause it to grow cold and become quenched or blocked.

I remember when I first read this passage years ago, it shocked me that Matthew could possibly be referring to God's Love. Human love I could understand, but referring to God's Love absolutely astounded me. Yet, as I think about it, this is one of the reasons why so many Christian marriages, relationships and church bodies are having so much trouble. In those situations, something has happened to God's Love in our hearts that has made it grow cold in our lives.

John 12:24-25 says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth [hangs on to] his life shall lose it; and he that hateth [lays down] his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

The question, of course, is: HOW do we do this on a practical day-to-day basis? How do we keep laying down our life until the day we are in heaven?

God's Love

In times past, as my feelings of frustration, resentment and bitterness over circumstances became unbearable, I would go to the Lord and say, "Where is the abundant Life that I'm supposed to have as a Christian? If You are the answer, then why am I so miserable? Where is the Love You talk about in Your Word and how on earth do I really experience it? "

Maybe some of you reading this can relate.

What I didn't understand at that time was that Agape is not a human emotion or human feeling, but God Himself loving through us. 1 John 4:8 tells us that "God is Agape." Therefore, God is the One doing the loving, not us. And all He desires from us is the willingness to set our "selves " aside, so that He can love His Love through us.

Now, when I say "set our selves aside," it's important you understand exactly what I mean. I don't mean setting aside who we really are and becoming some sort of a mindless robot. I mean simply learning to set aside all our thoughts, emotions and desires that are contrary to God's will and becoming a cleansed and open vessel. God's Life in our hearts will then be freed to come forth and fill our souls.

"Self" can be defined as all of our own thoughts, emotions and desires that are not of faith or that quench God's Spirit in us. For example, anger, guilt, bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, criticalness, doubt, pride, fear and so forth are the things that come from our self or our flesh.

Thus, all God desired from me at that time was the willingness to first yield and surrender my self to Him, so He could then freely love His Love through me. In other words, God's Love does not automatically flow through us just because we are His children. All of the things that we choose to hold on to - i.e., the above list (even if they are "justified" by the world's standards) - block God's Love in our hearts and cause it to grow cold in our lives.

There's a very provocative Scripture in Psalm 119:70 which talks about our hearts becoming "fat as grease." I can almost visualize a layer of kitchen grease covering my heart when I choose to hold on to or entertain any negative thought or emotion. The lesson here is very simple: in order to experience God's Love freely flowing from our hearts out into our lives, we must be open and cleansed vessels.

The truth is that when we bury our real thoughts and emotions, we don't get rid of them. We just program them in deeper, and then they can become the motivation for many of our future actions.

Now the world functions this way because the world has no other choice - no other option. Without Jesus in our lives to literally take away our hurts, fears, insecurities, unforgiveness, etc., we're all walking "time bombs," ready to explode! Read the newspapers today, watch TV, look at the people on the street and the kids in school. This explosive attitude is prevalent.

Naturally we all respond to hurt and pain in one of two ways: we either vent our anger and our frustration or we push our hurts, bitterness and unforgiveness down and bury them. If we have Jesus in our hearts, however, there is a third option (and this is what this series of meditations is all about): if we can simply recognize and acknowledge our true thoughts and emotions and learn how to literally give these things over to God (rather than venting them or burying them), then He promises to remove them from us "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12) and fill us with His Love.

Thus, our only responsibility, as His children, is to recognize and acknowledge the negative things in our lives that are not of faith (complete reliance on Him), and that will block God's Love in our heart, and learn how to give them over to Him. Then, God can freely love His Love through us, and not only will we have His Love for others, but we'll also experience His Love for ourselves in a greater degree.