Loving Jesus

Today’s reading is about surrendering all to Jesus. Yesterday’s sermon compared the supremacy of Jesus with trying to keep the Law of God. I say trying because I cannot do it. My efforts and ideas all fall short.

My plans also miss the mark. The past two weeks have been filled with interruptions to my agenda. Today I’m thinking that the interruptions are part of what God wants for me. Many of them were difficult: requests for prayer from a family in trouble, a relative in the hospital and his care-giver burned out, the death of an infant, threats to the well-being of a family member, people asking us to referee their feud with other people, my husband’s back injury still not healed, unexpected tasks added to my to-do list, and the pressure of not getting enough sleep.

All these added to the usual challenges to trust God with everything — yet as I pray and let Him interrupt my plans, there are lovely surprises: calls from loved ones, conversations with Christians young and older that were like tonic to my soul, words of affirmation, understanding and love, and enough energy to get the important chores done. Jesus is a faithful and wise ‘business manager’ for want of a better term, or perhaps ‘personal assistant’ — but more. He is Lord of life. I need to rejoice when He interrupts my schedule for He not only knows more and is wiser than I am, He wants to use me to somehow do what He wants done.

Yesterday a person that has seemed unteachable and stubborn asked me for help in three areas of life. A teen told all in hearing range that I am his favorite senior person. A couple about to move into a new home asked us come and pray for their life in that house before they enter it. In a long chat, a child asked me a dozen questions about life. One of our busy adult children called several times just to talk. We had a marvelous visit with a woman who is nearly 100, no dementia and delighted we came. Normally these would not seem huge, but with the other events, they were like a feast to a starving and very tired person.

Surrendering to Jesus means letting Him control life. I tried to do other things, but nothing happened that was not interrupted by His better plan. Now I see that He was using all this to affirm  that I can trust Him with the control of life’s events.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:13–17)

I’ve not boasted about what I will do, but the Word of God makes it clear that even resenting those interruptions would not be right. When the Lord wants something from me, I should gladly say YES.

Today’s reading says: “Be generous in your self-surrender! Meet His measureless devotion to you with a measureless devotion to Him. Be glad and eager to throw yourself unreservedly into His loving arms and to hand over the control of your life to Him. Whatever there is of you, let Him have it all. Give up forever everything that is separate from Him. Consent to resign, from this time forward, all liberty of choice, and glory in the blessed nearness of union…”

PRAY: And Jesus, I say amen. Thank You for the ability to not only see that You are in the interruptions, but that You have more in mind than just teaching me to humbly surrender. You are blessing others too and gladly going along with Your will is my opportunity to love them and love You with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. Thank You.