Limits

I wrote this journal entry a while ago. It is about living a life surrendered to God. I find myself needing to read this over and over to remind myself God deserves my trust, my faith and my life.

We may spend our life believing in God but we tend put limits on Him, limits to His abilities, limits that allow us to control areas of our life. I think this can be a conscious decision but also a subconscious one made out of habits or just from a lack of need. Sometimes the limits are for our own convenience. There are times in our lives that we want to do things our own way, and truthfully I think there are times and places in our life where we don’t want God. It is the difference between living a fully surrendered life and living a partially surrendered life, one where we choose areas of our life we surrender and other areas where we maintain control. What leads us to live a partially surrendered life? There are many reasons we limit God, things like success, or the busyness of life, our jobs, a habit we can’t or don’t want to shake, maybe a sin we just don’t want to give up. Sometimes it can be from pride. A partially surrendered life is one where we serve a God of limits. Other times, we, society, or Satan tells us we serve a God with limits by convincing us we don't need God here. Satan wants us to be blinded to the truths of the God we serve. To stop us from being fully used by God, and living in God’s will. Unlike Adam and Eve, Satan now tries to get us to eat of the tree of “ignorance” so we will not know the God we serve. Serving a limited God is just another way of Satan’s original lie that we can be like God it is just packaged in a different form.

But when a trial comes we find ourselves wanting to believe in a God who is limitless. Suddenly life exceeds us and we look towards God to be a God without limits. We want a God who can do all things, who is capable of taking care of life's messes we create. But we find our faith is not prepared, we have sown seeds with limits and it does not reap a crop of faith. A faith we need when all else fails. Of course depending on the “crisis” we may find our way out without needing God to be God. That only builds upon a weak faith that keeps us from being more effective for God. It steals our blessings from us. Satan knows if he keeps us from being effective in our faith, especially when a trial hits, it not only affects us but others around us. Just as God uses our life to encourage others Satan tries to use it to discourage and distract others. To have others look at our trail and plant the seed that God has failed us, when in fact it is more often we ourselves who failed. God is faithful, but He works in areas where we surrender.

While times without trials tests the seeds of faith we plant, trials are when we harvest the crop of faith we have sowed. However, what we do when life is “easy” speaks just as loudly as how we react to a trial, it becomes the well we draw from when life inevitably asks us to walk by faith. Times of peace and rest in some ways can be more difficult then a trial. Having the discipline to surrender our life everyday, when life does not demand it is in itself a test of our faith. Because there is no outside pressure forcing our decisions, our choices revel what we really believe. When life is going as we want is when we form our habits of our faith. When we let go and abandon ourselves when life is quiet is what allows us to reap the peace of letting go in a trial.