Surrender Excuses,,

[jpec07]

In one of the last chapels of last semester, Associate Dean of Students Tim Clark got up and gave a word. Generally, I can shrug these off as not applying to me, because usually they come with some kind of qualifier that I can use to exclude myself - not this one. The word was 'surrender.' By Tim, God basically said that someone in the crowd was

Comments

[asai_arcion]

One of my older friends is a professional writer. He's told us his story, in school he hated writing, failed his English and writing classes, but because he made a promise to always say 'Yes' to God, God had taken his gifts and used them, and he's found that the obstacles that he put in the way of becoming a writer, he suddenly finds himself on the other side of.

He still struggles, but because of the one little promise, God has given him a great gift. Moses was a murderer, God used him to lead the people out of Egypt, David (I think that's the right name) was an adulterer, he wrote many books of the Old Testament. The Bible is full of people like that, imperfect people, who said 'yes' to God and he turned them into heros.

[jpec07]

Thank you for giving voice to the flury of similar thoughts that have been running through my brain, that I've been fearfully and almost rebelliously trying to avoid.

I guess it boils down more to personal choice, and in this case, I want to not be a pastor (not wanting is apathy, wanting not is opposition). Am I just being rebellious? I know that, of the objections listed, none of them is anything God can't overcome or fix. Why do I recoil so at the thought?

This was a point brought up at the National Foursquare Conferrence in Dallas during perhaps one of the best sermons I've heard on suffering: if ever you're broken, if ever you're hurt, you have to let the Lord be the Lord of your brokenness, and the Lord of your hurting. Also that whenever you're hurt, and whenever a scar forms in you, God will rebuild you around that scar to make it something beautiful. I believe it was Thrice who sang the theology best:

I know one day all our scars will disappear like the stars at dawn, and all of our pain will fade away when morning comes.