
It’s a song I love. It’s a song I love to sing. But it’s a song that’s really hard for me to live.
Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
There are days when I don’t really want to live this. Instead, I end up living an oxymoron. In the morning, I come to God and re-surrender my life to Him. Here, God, it’s Yours. I live for You.
Fast-forward a few minutes to where He’s taking me up on my offer. I’m suddenly snatching my life back and clenching it in my fists.
God, You know that conversation is going to get really stretched out, and I don’t want to give that much of my time…
You want me to love them??? Didn’t You see how they hurt me???
God, it was a long day and I’m exhausted… I don’t want to go on a walk with her.
But anyway… take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
I’ll sing it, God… but I won’t live it.
You are near in their mouth but far from their mind. – Jeremiah 12:2b
It breaks my heart when I find myself living this awful oxymoron. How can I claim to love God, yet trample over His desires for me in pursuit of my own? Christianity can’t work this way. It doesn’t work this way.
Surrender is surrender. No bones about it. When we surrender ourselves to God, we give Him everything. Literally everything.
We give Him our time and the way we spend it. We give Him our family and friends and our interactions with them. We give Him all of our possessions and what we do with them. We give Him our talents and the way we use them. We give Him our longings, our passions, our hopes, our dreams…
We give Him everything.
And we don’t take it back.
That’s what it means to be an all-out disciple of Christ.
I don’t wanna spend my life stuck in a pattern
And I don’t wanna gain this world but lose what matters
And so I’m giving up everything because
I wanna be different
I wanna be changed
‘Til all of me is gone
And all that remains
Is a fire so bright
The whole world can see
That there’s something different
So come and be different in me
-from Different by Kyle Lee and Micah Tyler Begnaud
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash
This has spoken to me in many ways…
Thanks Laurel.
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Oh… I’m so glad! Absolutely.:)
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This is amazing!! I’ve also felt myself living like this, and it’s taken a step back and a reality punch to turn me around and actually LIVE for God, not just SAY that I will. Thank you for speaking this message! Sooner or later it will dawn on youth around the world and I’m so excited to see that you’re a part of making it happen!
(By the way, I love your profile picture!) 🤗
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Yes… so true. Thank you!:)
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G’day Laurel Jean and thanks for sharing!
Loved how honest you were, especially when you said “Fast forward a few minutes” lol, so true! We make this massive commitment and then bam, someone gets on our nerves and we act like we havent even been redeemed.
So important that we practice giving our life to him.
Stay connected to the Vine.
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The story of my life…but this does not have to be the stoty of our future. Not by my strength, but by his Spirit. Zachariah 4:6.
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Yes!!!
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