That which yields is not always weak.

Someone told me they miss my blog posts the other day, I didn’t realize anyone was “listening”. But it motivated me to do another one.

Anyways, I read this quote the other day, really stuck with me, reminded me about something I’d read in one of my fantasy novels. There was a woman talking about the differences in male strength and female strengths, she said that male strength is the strength of steel, it holds and holds and holds but eventually it snaps, shatters. Female strength is that of a young plant, that whilst it cannot hold, it endures, it is malleable it withstands pressure even steel cannot because it bends to pressure, allows itself to be pushed down, humiliated, but in the end, it endures beyond that pressure; it lasts.

Been thinking a lot about yielding to God’s will and ultimately to yield to His will means discerning what it is, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. Elisabeth Elliot counsels single people to accept God’s will for their life graciously that for those inclined to have a relationship not to resent their current lives.

“The important thing is to receive this moment’s experience with both hands. Don’t waste it. ‘Wherever you are, be all there,’ Jim once wrote. ‘Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.’
A lovely moonlit night, but I am alone. Shall I resent the very moonlight itself because my lover is somewhere else?
A cozy candlelight supper with friends – couples, except for me. Shall I be miserable all evening because they are together and I am single? Have I been “cheated”? Who cheated me?
The phone rings. Oh! Maybe it will be He! It’s somebody selling light bulbs. Shall I be rude because he ought to have been someone else?
A letter in the mailbox that (for once) doesn’t look like junk mail or a bill. I snatch it eagerly. It’s from Aunt Susie. Do I throw it away in disgust?
I know al about this kind of response. I’ve been there many times. Something I wrote to Jim once must have revealed me resentment for he wrote, “Let not out longing slay the appetite of our living.” That was exactly what I had let it do.
There were times, I’m sure, when if anyone had tried to talk to me about the happiness of heaven I would have turned away in a huff. The painful thing was that other folks not only had heaven to look forward to, but they had “all this and heaven too,” “this” this being engagement or marriage. I was covetous. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman Christians about the happy certianity of heaven, he went on to say, “This doesn’t mean, of course, that we have only a hope of future joys – we can be full of joy, here and now even in our trials and troubles.”
Even when I’m feeling most alone – on that moonlit night, in the middle of the candlelit supper, when the phone call and letter don’t come – can I be be “full of joy here and now”? Yes. That is what the bible says. That means it must be not only true, but possible and possible for me.
“Taken in the right spirit these very things will give us patient endurance; this in turn will develop a mature character, and a character of the sort prodces a steady hope, a hope that will never disappoint us”
Taken in the right spirit. These are the operative words. The empty chair, the empty mail box the wrong voice on the phone have no particular magic in themselves that will make a mature character out of a lonely man or woman. They will never produce a steady hope. Not at all. The effect of my troubles depends not on the nature of the troubles themselves but on how I receive them. I can receive them with both hands in faith and acceptance, or I can rebel and reject. What they produce if I rebel and reject will be something very different from a mature character, something nobody is going to like.
Look at the choices:
1. rebellion – if this is the will of God for me then He doesn’t love me.
2. rejection – if this is what God is giving me, I won’t have any part of it.
3. faith – God knows exactly what he’s doing
4. acceptance – He loves me; He plans good things for me; I’ll take it.
The words “full of joy here and now” depend on the words “taken in the right spirit”. You can’t have one without the other, Taken in a spirit of trust, even loneliness contributes to the maturing of character, even the endurance of separation and silence and that hardest thing of all, uncertainty, can build in us a steady hope.

My life currently is turning out much different to what I had dreamt of, hoped, prayed, planned, and prepared for. God is trying to bless me in His away and I instead of yielding to the change He is bringing about and like the young plant bending to adapt to that change so that I may grow in him, I have preferred to be the steel, obstructive to the soft breeze of change that He sends. Becoming increasingly resentful of all that is good in my life, increasingly envious of those who have what I wanted, unable to bless those around me because I cannot get past the idol I have created.

I read somewhere that “The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want but that we want it too much” this is very true of me. My desire has been something praiseworthy, “above reproach” holy even, until became a substitute God in my life and I rebel against God when I’m not given it, becoming ungracious to those around me, increasingly self centered and resenting even the path that led me to this desire.

To quote Joshua harris:
He closed the door on this and he had done it for my own good. The God of the universe was willing to reach down and be involved in the details of my life .

Too bad I haven’t learnt to do what Joshua Harris did
crying I thanked him
“I don’t understand but I thank you”
“I don’t understand but I know your are good”
“I don’t understand but I know you are taking this away because you have something better.

For those that pray, pray that I find the strength to yield, and to yield in joy and happiness knowing “no eye has seen nor ear has heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him”.