There is Grace for That…
I heard a song last night during the Greater Faith Service at FLC which was just what a worship
song should be to me. Some of the words are….”Mighty, Righteous, Matchless & Worthy, Holy, and
I call you Lord, and You call me Yours….what more can I ask for? Power and might are in Your
hands…who am I that you would care for me?… You look at me with such grace…” It makes me
think about the other songs we sing…and why we sing them.
Do you ever stop and think about the words you say or sing? I have, most recently anyway. I have
decided there are some songs I won’t sing along with, even if the whole congregation is singing it in
a service.
Now, this was what I thought.
These are such simple earthly words but they really can’t contain His fullness or how BIG and
AWESOME God is. Sometimes I pause, like a selah, and take in the vastness of who He is and I
still come short in the true fullness of Him.
He MUST look at me with incredible, powerful grace to be who HE is and fellowship with who I
am. The thing is, who I know I am, is not even in the fullness of who HE knows I am, and He still
looks upon me with love and acceptance. He still, despite that knowledge, notices me. This grace is
humbling, and His grace and mercy are the biggest benefits, outside of salvation, the blood of Jesus
offers to me.
I call Him Lord, and truly worship Him as such. Then when I examine my life, on the regular basis,
the decisions, reactions, and habits I see, I question that worship. “Is he really Lord, honestly?” I do
question this in myself more often now, but not as often as I want to. Especially as I knowingly rest
in the complete and righteous child HE made me. It’s this same grace that drives me to let some of
these hindering things in my life fall off. It isn’t the guilt I am speaking of because I know I don’t
live in guilt; it is this powerful grace that continues to clean out my vessel. His cleaning won’t
happen without my submission. Pruning won’t happen without my submission to the process. It’s
my agreement to release of all the unnecessary things that shouldn’t be there, I thought I needed.
The title of Lord is a big deal. Webster’s Dictionary stays:
\ ˈlȯrd \
1: one having power and authority OVER others:
a: a ruler by hereditary right or preeminence to whom service and obedience are DUE.
b: one of whom a fee or estate is held in feudal tenure.
c: an owner of land or other real (see REAL entry 1 sense 2) property.
d. obsolete: the male head of a household
e: HUSBAND
f: one that has achieved mastery or that exercises leadership or great power in some area.
2 (if) capitalized.
a: GOD sense 1
b: JESUS
Some questions I ask myself sound like these –
Does HE have authority over the things in my life?
Does he have authority over the decisions I make?
Is my obedience faithful… is it complete?
Does He own me…. all of me, all my real estate, all my possessions?
Does He have full authority over my skills, talents, and gifts?
Maybe a better way to say it is, have I surrendered all the things, obedience, decisions, talents, skills, gifts, real estate, possessions under His authority and Lordship to Him for Him to use as HE sees fit? Yeah, that sounds more like what I want to ask.
Being honest in that answer…my life, body and time would look a lot different if I had. People have called these priorities or commitments, even standards. I am not working to ‘get’ from God in any prideful, gluttonous way. I know I just receive from Him what He has promised to me, but I do have a part to play in accepting this gift, and this cleaning off of life’s residue. I don’t want to make His gift look un-credible because of my un-submission, but it does. Being overweight doesn’t give Him credit for healing, having credit card debt doesn’t give him credit for me being prosperous. Healing and prosperous living are still my gifts from Him, but how am I representing them? How am I presenting the gift from Him to the world? I have done better as time goes on with a righteousness consciousness’ thinking, and obedience that brings health and prosperous living. I would like to say it’s easy too, but it’s a mindset I am still overcoming. Walking from grace to grace is changing my life and knowing who I am in Him encourages that change. Instead of living under the mindset or the ‘law or works consciousness’ of doing good to get in His graces which I was raised under, has taken more time than I like. He has helped me to heal, slowly, from grace to grace. He doesn’t leave me stranded to move forward alone in His desires for my future, or yours.
Therefore, it is so difficult for me, (as well as many women from what I have seen recently in the world) to feel “ok” about the submission to my husband. This is what Eve fell for, questioning her submission. I am sure Adam discussed the tree with her. This is shown to us from her own remarks to the serpent. I am sure they passed by the tree several times a week, looking at its beauty and knowing what the ONE command from God had been about the tree. It was not so much a falling because of temptation as much as I see she fell because she laid aside her SUBMISSION to … first, Adam and second, to God. Eve gets a lot of chiding as so many of her sons and daughters still say things about her decision to partake, knowing she walked about inside this beautiful garden with God daily. That thinking has been almost hypocritical, along the lines of “How could she! If I had walked with God in that garden, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t go against His will and command. I mean He’s God! She walked with God….” I know this accusation exists because in my immaturity I thought it too. I can imagine, during the cool of the afternoons, she talked to God about other things as well, and surly learned different lessons from God, not just about the fateful tree law. She stepped outside of that education, and submission purposefully. I can’t imagine the shame she felt, not as the level of shame we feel, I think it was much more powerful because shame was new, she had never felt it before. I don’t remember the first time I felt shame, but I know it stayed with me, that is how powerful it was. None of us step into sin accidently, we walk straight into it, looking directly into its eyes, with a full knowledge and discretion of the wrong being committed. Which shows me, in all reality… submission is true safety, and a willful direct decision, a deliberate act of love. It is nothing to be feared when used the way it was created to be used. That is why God told her specifically in Genesis 3:16– ” Unto the woman he (God) said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall RULE OVER thee (wife).” Making the position of the wife, not woman in general, notice the words, in submission to the husband. This was only said in response to her actions with the serpent. Obviously, Adam did not rule over her previously or God wouldn’t have to prescribe this penalty to her. Also, God never intended childbirth to be painful! Can you even imagine giving birth without pain or suffering, just a natural beautiful occurrence? One day your walking along the river, picking flowers and the next thing your allowing your body to release a baby, without pressure, without pain and it is a triumphant event! It’s still so beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t supposed to be the way we know it now even. That’s MERCY! He could have said, “Be gone Eve, you disobeyed!”, and poof He evaporated Eve, right then and there. Instead, He gave her something she could handle while trusting in Him through the process.
The key is, I don’t want to carry Eve’s ‘attitude’ into my own relationship with God. If I can’t submit to my husband, then I would also be much less likely to truly submit to God. Like the very familiar example of when a child refuses to submit to his/her parent’s rules. If the parent allows this behavior the child also surely won’t submit to a teacher, or others in authority throughout life. The biggest deception is the same one Eve faced in her temptation. It’s the deception laid out before me, and thousands of other voices I hear in the world I live amongst. Voices which try to persuade this attitude of not submitting is “ok”. Those same voice’s say, ‘I can just rely on the fact that I am generally a good person and I do good things…’ but that isn’t what I am called to be. I can’t lead others if I never submit to being led first.
I see so many baby Christians stepping out into serious ministry positions after only less than 5 years of their salvation and I pray for them, for their inevitable difficult journey, and highly probable fall. Toddlers aren’t mature enough to lead, it takes time to be discipled, more time than most think. It also takes submission, and years of that, not just a couple solid ones.
I pray, I will SEE the areas where I am not submitting…because I don’t want to lie whenever I call Him, Lord. I want to be able to truly call Him Lord. I WANT that submission in my life. How a wife submits to her husband, is the very way she submits to God. I feel it is simple submission.
Submission is key to every healing, as well as the breaking of chains from bondages or addictions I honestly search for. If I sit in my comfy Christian lifestyle and say “God, why isn’t this going away?!!” AS IF I were not responsible somehow as well, I am fooling myself. I want to respond and submit to Him more fully, quicker, and without fear. I desire to really see the goodness of God…in all its fullness…in the land of the living (earth), today.
What if this submission I have purposefully avoided is exactly what I’ve missed in receiving what I desire, or what God desires in my life? What if I was wrong all along in being unsubmitted?
There is grace for that…
Adam's Eve 