The struggle of entire consecration to God is always an issue of trust. Can I trust him with my future? Can I trust him with my calling or career? Can I trust him with the selection of my partner? Can I trust him to provide? Can we trust him to protect? Can I trust him to bring me joy and satisfaction? Does he know what he is doing when he allows overwhelming pain to enter my life? Is God trustworthy enough that I can surrender every aspect of my life to him? The questions can take many different forms. Yet, all of them point to the seminal struggle of trust. In his book, Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby highlights three realities concerning the nature of God that give us every reason to surrender all to him.
1. God Is All-Powerful: He Can Enable You to Accomplish His Will
The struggle of surrender often centers around a sense of inability to accomplish what God is calling us to do. This is not a unique struggle. When Moses, the Great Prophet of Israel, was commissioned by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, his response was, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?… O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Exodus 3:11, 4:10). However, Moses had his eyes on the wrong person. He was looking at his own abilities. What he failed to see, was the power of the One who had called him. The Lord’s response to Moses was this, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what to say” (Exodus 4:11-12). In other words, the Lord was saying to Moses, “I am all-powerful. I will enable you to accomplish my will.”
God’s call to entire consecration will always call us away from our own abilities and into a life of trust in a God who is all-powerful. His will for our lives will always be more than we can understand and more than we can accomplish in ourselves. He does not design it this way to make us fearful of trusting his will. He does it so that we might know that we live “not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit” (Zechariah 4:6).
“What a blessed experience is ours,
of the Lord’s all-mighty power,
when we trust him to empower us for his glory!”
2. God Is All-Knowing: His Directions Are Always Right
My best friend is extremely directionally challenged. I, on the other hand, have a strong sense of direction. Over the years, we have gone on several road trips. On those trips, I have always insisted on mapping our route because I knew that, left to him, we would get lost. I also found a measure of satisfaction in knowing that my directions could be trusted. On a few occasions, we would have a disagreement over the directions; and, on all of those occasions my directions would prove to be right. All of this was ripped away from me one day when he got a GPS. Since that day, he and Daffney, the name that he affectionately gave to the lady who now parrots him directions, have made it safely to countless destinations, and my routing expertise is no longer needed.
We are not very good at mapping out the course of our lives. Like my arguments with my friend, the un-surrendered heart questions the Lord’s directions. The point of struggle is our unwillingness to trust God with the outcome. So many times, the will of God does not make sense. In human, rational terms it is unreasonable. We struggle with trusting God because we want assurance that everything will turn out as we think it should. However, the admonition of Scripture is to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).
We recently celebrated 35 years of ministry at the church where I pastor. As I was reading through the historical documents of the church, I came across the story of the original board’s decision to begin building our church. At the time of the decision, there was $3,000 in the building fund; $5,000 was needed to begin. It was recounted that at a particular board meeting, there was a prevailing sense that God was leading them to begin building. However, $2,000 was still needed. The board took a faith vote that night to begin laying the foundation for the church. The very next week, the pastor was calling on a parishioner in the hospital. This parishioner did not know of the boards decision nor the amount needed to begin the project. As she visited with the pastor, she said, “Pastor, I have $2,000 that I would like to give toward the building of the new church if you will keep my name quiet.” The Lord’s directions in the board meeting did not seem rational, but his directions were right.
The God who desires to have full direction over our lives is a God who is all-knowing. He sees the end from the beginning. He may only show us one step at a time, but he knows exactly where that step is leading us. And, he will always lead us right.
3. God is Love: His Will Is Always Best
The realities of God’s power and knowledge are wonderful realities, but they are infinitely enhanced by the reality that God is love. In other words, God will never use his power or his knowledge against us. Love is his crowning attribute, and it governs all of his other attributes. Two times, the Apostle John tells us, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). This is to say that his very essence is love. He cannot act in any other way but lovingly. Blackaby says, “Never in your life will God ever express His will toward you except that it is an expression of perfect love. He can’t! God’s kind of love always seeks the very best for a person. Therefore, He can never give you second best. His nature will not let Him” (Experiencing God, 17). The call to surrender in Romans 12:1-2 is predicated on the fact that God’s will is “…good, acceptable, and perfect….” With this assurance of God’s love, we can trust that God will never hurt us. His will is always just what we need.
The struggle of surrender can be a deep and long struggle, but it does not need to be. With a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly loving, we have every reason to surrender all to him.
What are some other attributes of God that give you a reason to consecrate yourselves to him? Leave your comments below.
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All Scripture quotes are from the New King James Version.
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