Friday, April 20, 2012

The Bondage of Self

I'm not much for formalized, pre-packaged prayers.  There are only a few that even capture my attention - the Lord's prayer obviously (a.k.a the "our Father") is one of them.  But in the last few weeks another suggested prayer has been on my mind.

It goes like this (modernized to remove the thees and thous and other Elizabethan language): "God, I offer myself to You, to build with me and do with me as You wish.  Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do what You want. Take away my difficulties, so that victory over them will bear witness - to those I might help - of Your power, Your love, and Your way of life. Amen."  

I've discovered that this is not a one-time prayer.  It doesn't mean that I become a Christian all over again when I say it (or need to say it, which is often) - I only discovered it about two years ago I guess - what I mean is that the problem with a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) is that it keeps crawling off the altar.  

Praying this prayer (and meaning it) reminds me that He is God - and I am not.  I give lip service to this fact of course (what Christian doesn't?) but sometimes I find myself acting more like I believe I am God and He is not. 

Priorities.

Some of the people I hang around with say, in reference to relationship with God, that "God is either everything or He is nothing."  What they mean is that there are no half-measures with God.  He will start where we are, to be sure, but He will not give up on us until we are totally and completely committed to Him - a never-ending process!  He does this, not to burst out into an evil laugh and then torture us, but because He knows we are never happier than when we give Him the central part of our lives, the core of who we are - and doing this willingly cannot help but transform us from the inside out.  Slowly.  This offering ourselves up to Him daily (sometimes hourly!), this identification with and submission to His way of life (day by day) is, as Romans 12:2 says, our only reasonable response to His love: our spiritual service of day-by-day worship.  

Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening.  But that's not what matters.  Let me give you an illustration.  There was this woman once who was so fed up with her own inability to retain spiritual truths.  She complained to me about it.  "It just goes in one ear and out the other - my mind is like a sieve!!"  I seized the opportunity her words gave me.  "So," I said.  "What happens when you run clean water through a dirty sieve?" Her eyes widened.  "It gets clean."  I nodded. "Exactly. You may not think anything is happening. But it is happening without your even knowing about it."  

Other times I get inklings of the fact that there's a transformation going on.  My unexpected reaction to a problem that would have perplexed me before will sometimes give me a clue to what God is doing in me.  

But in either case, I've found that the best and safest way to live is just to stay close to Him and to keep offering myself to Him, to build with and do with as He wishes - to keep asking Him to relieve me of the bondage of Self, so that I can do what He wants me to do the way He wants me to do it, to remove the barriers to my usefulness to Him so that I can reach the people He wants me to reach.  And once in a while, in His grace, He lets me see just a small corner of what He is doing in and through me.     

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