Episode 593

TODAY’S READING

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

1 Corinthians 15:50

What I love most about this is that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. There is something so beautiful about surrendering the need to control every situation. And something so beautiful about surrendering our flesh, surrendering the idea that we have control or all of the little things that happen in life because we don’t, there’s very few things that we have control over. And that’s how we respond to what happens to us. And we should always respond from a place of love, a place of grace, a place of mercy, a place of the Spirit. Now, what I wanted to paint a picture of today was the idea of surrendering. Yesterday I went to my boxing class; I go boxing every so often. I try to go at least three times a week. And when we wrap our hands or when my instructor wraps my hands, he then helps me put on my boxing gloves because now my hands are pretty much tied, and I don’t have the ability to put on the glove myself. Now the reality is that I could figure out how to do that. I can struggle a little bit and wrap it up myself, but just the natural surrendering of allowing him to put the glove on for me is something so minuscule and so simple, but it makes my life easier, and it costs him no effort whatsoever. And when I did that yesterday when I put my hand and said the glove, and he wrapped it for me. It was the perfect picture of what it looks like when we let God help us with little things. 

We give him the ability to do so it doesn’t bother him whatsoever to help us, and we could, in essence, do it. But it’s going to take us long, or it’s going to be a little bit harder. And the reality is that the glove wouldn’t have been on tight enough and may have fallen along the way and then would have had to refasten or retighten the glove. Now, if we think about the life that way, we think about all the ways in which we could do it. We could continue to apply to a million jobs waiting for the one to land, and we could make a way we don’t see ways by grabbing the phone and calling everybody, making that way right nudging yourself in every situation that you need to be nudged into or that you want to be nudged into, and we could, in essence, figure life out. I know that I did that for my entire young adulthood. I tried to figure life out by myself. But it wasn’t until I surrendered my life to God that I realized the true power behind that. 

So today, think about life. As simple as putting on boxing gloves. You could, in essence, do it yourself. But why if you have an instructor, and in this case, we have a beautiful and loving father that wants to do it for us? It is no trouble for him whatsoever. He wants to make sure that you are able to not only be safe but to then go into this fighting arena which is life, and be successful.

Prayer:

We thank you for everything you do for us because you want to, Lord; it’s not an inconvenience to you. We would love you to help us. You’d love to be there for us, and we could not think we are going to be better about allowing you to take part in the little things and the big things and the little thing. It’s really easy for us to just ask you for help when we need it. But it’s hard for us to look at the little things we think we’re doing great at a great job and then surrender those things to you. So, Lord, we look for little moments in life in which we can surrender our like to you, Lord, for the moments in which we couldn’t, in essence, do it. But it would be much better if we allowed you to do it. And we give you that power. We give you that grace, and we give you the room to move on our behalf. We love you, and we ask that you continue to bless this beautiful day. It is in your son’s mighty name that we pray today and every day. Amen.