SWEET SURRENDER
To be with God forever... always sounds like an unfulfilled life to me. In a worldly point-of-view, the act of submission and surrender always seems synonymous with "loser" or "failure." But in my heart I know it's a battle between my ego and my soul... a matter of personal pride, a sinful residue, a remnant of The Fall. God doesn't do what's good for me, He does what's best for me guided by omniscience and omnipotence. In a heavenly point of view, enjoying God is the best privilege and gift anyone can ask for. The only biting, stinging sorrow in me is the love of God overflowing through me. It is the Apostle Paul's paradox when he said, "What I want to do, I do not do." Filled with God's affinity with mankind, I long to see the nations saved, and I desire that "none perish, but that all come to know the truth." That's the dream anyway, both mine and God's. We also know that there are certain people who are called - and answer that calling. But more importantly, we both know that God sent Jesus to set us all free, and we are free to choose to be with or without God. That freedom, in the end, causes us to cry out, "It is not who is called, but who will listen?" Tell the story. The Greatest Story Ever Told has not been told for quite a while. It is history, His Story, God's story. It is a love story, of a divine Groom pursuing His Bride to the ends of the earth, through Hell and back, to the outskirts of eternity. It is our story, a story of finding our way home, even though we start out not knowing we were lost in the first place. We know there is more to us, to life. We try to gain it back by improving ourself, by building Heaven on Earth, the millenium version of the Tower of Babel. But after a lifetime of endless pursuits, we come face to face once more with our Maker. And what will matter to Him most is if we were running home or running away. Because being "Our Father in heaven," He hopes we come to our senses in time and find Him waiting with open arms. I know I did, and He helps me remember that Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, life to the full." Not at all the "unfulfilled life" I was dreading. Not at all. In fact, it's unimaginably, magnificently more than I could have ever dreamed possible.
