Letting it Go

I have a talented dog. You might remember a post several months ago where she is showing off a new trick (click here to see it). Anyway, in this video is my dog and her ball. She wants me to throw her the ball, but she won't give it to me... well, you'll see...

This is my dog Babe. She is pretty annoying most of the time - but we still love her. She is never far from one of her tennis balls, and someone is always throwing it for her. Her big thing is that she wants you to take the ball from her. You can't just have a nice game of fetch with Babe, you have to wrestle that ball from her, and she will not let it go until SHE is ready for you to have it. In the video, when I pretended like I didn't want the ball, she put it down. The instant I went to get it, though she picked it right back up and wouldn't let me have it. And so we play this game over, and over, and over AND OVER each and every night!!! Sigh......I do love that dog, though...

I was thinking about that today and thought, man, that is SO how I am with God. There are things in my life that I have asked, begged, pleaded, bargained and prayed for God to take out of my life - and He hasn't. I've told myself I don't know why He hasn't taken these things from me, but I DO. I know why. I'm not giving it to Him. I want to give it to Him. Right now, at this very moment, typing this I want Him to have every part of my life. But later, maybe tomorrow...maybe the next day I'm going to want to take those areas of my life back from Him. Like Babe with the ball, I want Him to take it from me. I'm saying, "Here God, I want you to have this part of me that I've never given you before," and then when He goes to take it, I won't let go. I hold on to that thing like that ball of Babe's. God doesn't want to wrestle things out of our lives. He wants us to give it up freely to Him. He wants us to WANT to give it to Him, and then leave it with Him.

The sin in our lives is just that: sin IN our lives. I am a child of GOD who has sin IN her life. (bear with me, but I'm about to use ANOTHER analogy...) Okay, lets say you have a bowl of Potato Cheese soup (the best soup out there, if I may say so myself). Now, lets say I put some pepper in that soup - does it then become Pepper Potato Cheese soup? No, its just Potato Cheese soup with some pepper IN it. Or what if something weird happened....like a bug flew into the soup. Is it now Potato and Bug Cheese soup? Eewwww, but no, its soup with a bug in it. I know it sounds sort of dumb, but that is how we (or at least I) view myself in Christ. I am not a Sinning Child of God. I am a child of God who has sin IN her life. If I never conquer the sin in my life - I will STILL be a Child of God. Nothing will change that. What I do is not who I am. I have to remember that. I HAVE to remember that. I cannot live the life God has intended for me to live with the thought in the back of my mind that I am not good enough to live it. If not for God's grace, His mercy, His unfailing love for us - where would any of us be?