Open Hands

I include some thoughts about what I believe because what I believe is at the heart of why I do what I do. Feel free to disagree. This is simply a place where I share my heart so you can understand me a little better. In turn, I will listen if you care to share. It's OK if we end up each choosing something different. But it's so important that we give one another space to listen and be heard.

So many times I’ve gone to Jesus asking for help, favor, blessings, etc. As I basked in a beautiful worship service, I had a mental picture of myself creating a living demonstration. It looked like this:

In front of everyone, I ask God for favor. Then I go around and gather all the superfluous items in the room. It will help you to realize that there are tissue boxes all over my church as we can get rather emotional at times. So, I’m walking around asking God for favor and blessings and in the meantime I’m gathering all the tissue boxes until my arms and hands are completely full and I can hold no more - things are falling out of my arms. Then I return to the front of the room and ask God again for favor.

What’s the point of the tissue boxes? Because they represent all the things I’m holding on to. Each box represents something that I’m not willing to let go of. Perhaps control, pride, anger, fear, hurt, depression, even things I cannot completely control but try to hang on to anyway, like my friends/partner’s responses to me.

I’ve asked God to give me something that only He can give, yet I’m hanging on to so many other things even if He did try to hand it to me, I cannot manage it; no matter how good and wonderful it is. What’s the point?

When I got married, I moved myself, my dog and about 3 suitcases into my husband’s small 2 bedroom apartment. To prepare for me coming into his home, he allowed the church ladies to clean and bought new bathroom towels. That’s it. After our honeymoon, the first week of our marriage I had my suitcase on the couch and had to live out of it. He laughed it off but I’ll never forget the hurt. It felt to me like he clearly loved his own way more than he wanted to consider my needs.

How often do we do that to Jesus? We ask for his love, mercy, forgiveness and all manner of things that we legitimately need. But we fail to make room to allow ourselves to be fully known by Him. We allow our hearts to stay messy and full of the stuff we think we must have. Then, we wonder why it seems He’s not answering our prayers.

When we pray, we must join the Psalmist who wrote multiple times, “Search my heart.” We must allow God to help us get rid of all the junk and clutter so when we ask, our hands and arms are truly empty and ready to receive from Him. We cannot make conditions on how we receive it. That’s when His love comes pouring in so overwhelmingly all we can do is exist in awe and wonder of Him. That’s how we stand in the middle of all the hard stuff.

There are no regrets when we fully surrender to our incredible God.