The terrible thing of 'giving all'

Thoughts of 'giving your absolute best to God' continue to permeate my thoughts, even after my last blog post. And, I feel the need to clarify something important which I feel I may have left out.

I mentioned the importance of giving your very best to God, of cultivating your specific talents and abilities to the best of your capability, then using them for God's glory. I also connected my talents and my best to the continuing of higher education; I stated that this is the way I feel I can best use what God has given me. 

Hear this:

Just because higher education is my venue for cultivating my talents, doesn't mean it is the right choice for you. God blesses each of us with different gifts, so if yours is different than mine, that's actually a good thing! God is creative in distributing talents and abilities, so it is futile to compare yours to mine, or anyone else's for that matter. 

For me, it's a much bigger matter even yet. It's what C.S. Lewis calls the 'terrible thing' of giving all. Here's what Lewis explains in his book, Mere Christianity. (Which, by the way, if you haven't read, you should.) 

"Christ says, 'Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will you Myself: my own will shall become yours.'"

"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self - all your wishes and precautions - to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call 'ourselves', to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time to be 'good'. We are all trying to let mind and heart go their own way - centred on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and re-sown." 

Wow. So, essentially, it's not even an issue of higher education or not. Everything stems back to this 'terrible thing' of giving all. In giving all, there is a freeing state of captivity in which we are crucified to our own desires, and drawn to God's greater plan instead. It's the only way to achieve true contentment in life. 

Happy September Weekend!