He’s not holding out; I’m holding on.
Thus was one of the conclusions we came to last night in my Real World Bible study. We were studying the story of Lazarus’ death and resurrection. I thought it was interesting because I had never thought about it that way before.
But it’s totally true!
So often I look back, and I can totally see that God was waiting for me to surrender before blessing me with something.
By way of example…
Back in mid-August 2007, my old room mate, Jeff, and I were looking for housing. We were living in a s0-s0 apartment in Mountain View. Our lease was coming to an end, and I knew that since I didn’t want to stay in that place we had to find something. It was getting towards the end of July, and I was getting a bit frantic. I really didn’t want to stay in that apartment, but we had a couple of problems.
- We couldn’t find anything in our price range. Most of what we were looking at was going to be about $900/person. Jeff was a student, and I certainly didn’t want to be spending that much on rent every month.
- We couldn’t find anything that would have been an upgrade from our present location.
So it was frustrating. One Saturday quite close to our deadline, we had been out looking for apartments all morning with no dice. To frustrate matters, we had visited a whole bunch of places that said “For Rent” but it really turned out that they had those signs up in perpetuity. They never took them down.
I came home frustrated and upset. Why wouldn’t God let us find a place to move? Then it occurred to me that perhaps God didn’t want us to move. Maybe He wanted us right where we were, and He wanted me to be content with what He had already given to me. I took that moment to apologize to God in my heart and surrender the situation to Him.
Then Jeff suggested we check out Craigslist again. I grumbled because I figured it was pointless. But as Providence would have it, a new posting had gone up for a 4 bedroom townhouse 0.6 miles from where we were. We called them up, arranged a meeting, saw the place, and decided we wanted to apply. And the rest they say is…history.
But it took me surrendering and letting go in order for God to release His blessings. May this be a lesson to all of us that we should strive to surrender and give our needs, our desires, our wants, and our goals to Him. I was holding on too tightly to what I wanted.
He wasn’t holding out; I was holding on.