Open Your Hands

For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. Phillipians 4:13

So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. Romans 8:6-7

For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power. 1 Corinthians 4:20

Nothing is too hard when you are walking with Jesus. With Him you can do the easy things and the hard things, the fun things and the things you dread, even things you never thought you might be called to do. But you have to let Him take the lead. “If God is your co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat.”

For much of my life I depended on my own strength and my own independence. I tried to make things turn out the way I thought they should. Even with the best intentions to do the right thing and live a godly life, my own will just led to more bad choices and more sinful behavior. When I finally learned to give up that self driven nature, to embrace dependence on God, and to let the Spirit take control of my life, things actually started to fall into place. Not that everything was suddenly perfect, quite the opposite at times. The enemy will step up his attacks when he sees you turning to the Lord. But when you are walking with Jesus and have the Spirit filling you up, you have access to all of His power and authority to send the enemy running. And you can have peace within His protection, even in the midst of the storm.

It’s not enough to just talk the talk, put on a show, go to church, do all the “right things”. In order to tap into God’s strength and power, you need to give up your own. It’s scary to let go and loosen your grip on what you think you are controlling. But you need to choose whether you want to live by your own power, strength and authority or God’s. Whose do you think is greater?

We try so hard to hold our lives together. We think that if we relax our grip things will fly out of control. But they won’t. They fly right into God’s hands. He is ready to catch everything we let go of. Some he will destroy, the things that have been hurting us…shame, fear, worry. He gets rid of those and will not give them back. Some He will re-work and hand back in much better condition, our good intentions that we just didn’t have quite right. And then He will add the things that He has been holding onto for us, the plans that He has had for us all along just waiting for us to ask and accept them. These are the things we didn’t even know that we wanted. Or maybe we did, but didn’t think we could actually have them. While we’ve been running around trying to find what’s ours, or trying to make it ourselves, He’s been keeping it for us, just patiently waiting for us to open our hands and drop what we’re holding onto so that He can give us what we were meant to have. He may need to knock some things out of our stubborn grip to make room for His gifts. But if we can just open our hands and drop what we’re holding so tightly, He will fill them with exactly what we need.