HOW MUCH ARE YOU WILLING TO PAY FOR THE LIFE THAT YOU THINK YOU DESERVE?

After the Shunamite conference which I attended last year of November, I stood on the pulpit testifying about God’s goodness but I remember there is one thing I mentioned that all throughout the year of 2013, the year before that and up until this year I have been genuinely hearing myself shouting for FREEDOM. For years I have been shouting for FREEDOM and I don’t understand why. I asked myself FREEDOM from WHO, (Is there anyone from the past that I have not yet forgiven or I haven’t ask forgiveness from? But I couldn’t think of anyone.) then I thought probably from SOMETHING? (addiction? Past hurt? I couldn’t think of anything either.) For years, I would shout for freedom from which that is not known to me.

Every time I would be in a congregation where the Pastors would ask us to shout anything we want to happen in our lives I would always think of CARS because I am sick of commuting, HOUSE AND LOT because I am tired working and working so I can pay my rent or FINANCIAL BREAKTHROUGH so I could put an end to this everyday work that seems to suck every ounce of joy in me but always, ALWAYS I would end up shouting FREEEEEEDDDDDOOOOOMMMM. I guess, maybe, just maybe, that is what I REALLY wanted all along. For the bible tells us, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” – Luke 6:45

YOU DESERVE TO BE FREE, LET IT GO.

For years I don’t understand because for years I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I WANT. Until a friend lends me a book and I learned the PRAYER OF ANYTHING. Prayer of anything is a prayer for whatever God wants for my life. Laying my hands open to whatever He will give and yes even for whatever He will take. A life fully surrendered and fully abandoned to an invisible God who hold the universe to His hand. To RISK EVERYTHING and to willingly place my life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future.¹

SCARY? Surely! LIBERATING? ABSOLUTELY!

I saw too many Christians living a life full of BONDAGE and I saw that life of bondage in my own life. I was technically free but living a life that wasn’t. For a very long time I became a PRISONER of myself. I was in bondage because of my FEARS. Fear to go back where God picked me up; POVERTY and so I enslaved myself to work AS HARD AS I CAN so I will never LACK once again. I FEAR of NOT fulfilling my dreams: those cars, those house and lots, those savings account, those jewelries, those expensive gadgets and appliances and so I stripped myself of all the joy and pushed myself to even go further from doing everything I can to achieve all THESE THINGS THAT THE WORLD THINK IS IMPORTANT. I fear of not being ENOUGH and so I chased these worldly things: money, fame, power, beauty, position so people would somehow approve of me.

But one day I got TIRED, I saw myself miserable, unhappy, crying, whining about years of chasing things that WERE SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR ME, that were supposed TO MAKE ME HAPPY, that God was supposed to do for me. I ached and that ache was actually God’s mercy showing me that everything I LOVE OTHER THAN HIM was never going to work. IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO WORK.² All these are meaningless, all these are just merely chasing after the wind.

“I was waiting, Abby, calling you. I was waiting for you to see that while you wanted me all these years, 

you had another master. Your heart was divided. You love something else more and I will not share my glory. 

I had to become your ONE THING… your ONLY thing.”³ - God

What is your ANYTHING?

It’s funny sometimes how God finds His way to our hearts. And He did make His way to my heart through this book. While reading the book He revealed to me how He was a PLASTIC GOD FOR ME. A plastic God whom I fit in a small crevice of the life THAT I WANT. The life that I am planning to have. ⁴

Just when I thought I had an intimate genuine relationship with Him while I am being faithful with my devotion and prayer time He revealed to me how FAR I am from the truth.

He said:

“Repent [Abby], you are not good, you are not okay. Come back to me. You need me.” – John 8:11

Too many Christians think they are okay, I thought I am because I loved Jesus Christ, I adore and sang praises to Him every Sunday morning. But I realized I have admired and worshipped Jesus without doing what He did. And I have questioned myself, have I really worshipped Him in spirit and truth? Oh well I guess not, because the bible said that we become what we worship and if I TRULY DID, I would have been out there winning the lost and making disciple. Fully abandoned, fully surrendered… JUST LIKE HIM.

But how can I abandon this colourful life I am building and to fully surrender EVERYTHING to a PLASTIC GOD? I needed God to be REAL before I can trust Him, especially with EVERYTHING.

But how can you make something like GOD real? How can you trust EVERYTHING in an invisible God? How can someone know GOD as REAL as HE EVER WAS?

Prayer? Studying scripture? Going to church? Worship? Experience? Suffering? Confession? Community and the list can go on and on…

But the book taught me that very obvious that each of these is unpredictable… many people who study the bible never find God. Many people who go to church never really know Him. The ONLY exercise that works 100% of the time to draw one close to the REAL GOD is RISK. To risk is to willingly place our lives in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch Him come through. That is when He gets real when we start living like that.

Because ONLY when we experienced God’s faithfulness is the only time when HIS STORY becomes real to you and me, and when a story gets real, IT DOES SOMETHING INSIDE US.⁵

I’ve heard a Pastor once said, 

“There are so many things that you will never learn about God until you SURRENDER.”

And so I did… I quit my life. RISK IT ALL… SURRENDERED EVERYTHING. I let go of my dreams, my fears, my EVERYTHING to a God who cares, who is abounding in love and delighted to see His children happy and I have prayed for a heart that is committed to do ANYTHING its giver asks. To lay my hands open to whatever He gives and whatever He takes. To give thanks in the midst of pain, death, debt and crushed dreams.

This, all these, gave me the FREEDOM that my heart longs to have, a freedom from the wrong mindset, a freedom from the world’s standard, a FREEDOM FROM MYSELF. I never realized how liberating it would be to pray for ANYTHING God wants for me. He set me FREE, from what I think I want, from what I think I desire, from my self-imposed standards, from my selfish ambitions and vain conceit. He sets me free and gives me what He truly desires for me; a BLESSED LIFE, a life that is may or may not be wealthy by the world’s standards, but a life that enjoys every moment of the day, grateful and happy whether hands full or hand’s empty, a quality of life that most millionaires would envy.

And so I come up with a conclusion:

Knowing God, the truest God that He is REDEEMS US.

To REDEEM IS:

1. To recover ownership of by paying a specified sum.

2. To pay off

3. To turn in and receive something in EXCHANGE.

4. To fulfil, to FINISH.

5. To convert into CASH.

6. To rescue or ransom.

7. To SAVE from a state of sinfulness and its consequences.

8. To make up for

9. To restore the honor, worth, or reputation of: 

10. TO SET FREE.

Maybe some of you here have been HOLDING ON to something; a failing marriage or a failing business, a failing heart or a failing health. Or maybe you have been praying for something for too long you are too spent to sigh another “please.” Or “Amen.” Whatever you are facing right now, brothers and sisters I encourage you to let go, to SURRENDER and to risk it all. Because it is safe to trust, it is safe to let go because we know that we are entrusting our ANYTHING to a God that is good, a God who cares and above all a GOD who LOVES us SO MUCH… and everything that He will allow together with all those that He will NOT is only because HE LOVES US. He love us so much “He did not spare His ONE AND ONLY Son, but gave Him up for us all – [THEREFORE] how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things.?” – Romans 8:32

FRIENDS, the Son paid a TERRIBLE PRICE FOR OUR FREEDOM. Let us walk in that FREEDOM Christ had died for. Let us all stop living a life of bondage. LET IT GO! LET GOD BE GOD. SURRENDER! RISK IT ALL! FOR He is worth forsaking everything. HE IS WORTH IT.

“I am God Abby, I know what I’m doing. I know this feels excruciating but 

I am about something here and I am asking you to trust the One who tells the oceans 

where to stop and the sun when to launch.”⁶ - God

YOU DESERVE TO BE FREE, LET IT GO! 

And so I close with this verse Romans 8:28-30

“28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also GLORIFIED.”

We have hope in Him and He promised that he who hope n Him will never be disappointed AND HE WHO PROMISED IS FAITHFUL.

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 Footnote ^1-6  is from the book of Jennie Allen “Anything”