My Life Is Not My Own

"My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me ever single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen."

What an amazing thing it is to come to the realization that God wants all of me, good and bad. I do not have to struggle with and defeat the bad on my own. I do not have to carry its weight around because God won't have anything to do with it. I do not have to be afraid that my wretchedness will keep God from my life. He waits for me to turn to Him and say here, you can have this too.

But not only will He take the bad for me, and from me, as I am willing to surrender it, He wants the good as well. The good must be given to Him so that it can be used in the most effective way possible. The good must be given to Him so that the credit can go to the one who truly deserves it, and so that I don't slip back into self centeredness and pride over what I consider my positive traits.

I must not beat myself to a spiritual bloody pulp over the bad and view myself as a monster worse than any could imagine. And I must not praise myself overly much for the good in me and see myself as the saint. I am neither monster nor saint. Humility comes so much more easily when I give it all to Him and allow myself to be guided and used as He sees fit.

The key to my freedom, joy, hope, serenity, and love is in servanthood, and I can not be an effective servant while holding any part of myself back from God. By giving all of myself, the good and the bad, I become pliable and useful to God. Until I truly give God the bad, I can not totally become willing for Him to remove those things from my life. Some of the shortcomings in my character I still enjoy, but by making them no longer mine, gifts to God, I can more readily release them, because they are not mine to hold on to. And I can be of more good to others when I have the understanding that the good no longer belongs to me either and therefore it is up to God when and how and where and for whom it is used. I don't get to pick and choose when, and who, and where I serve. I go and do what I am told, when I am told to do it, and for whom. This may sound like slavery, but it is a choice to be a servant, and I have never felt so free in my life. With this total surrender I have been given more power in my life than I could ever imagine.

This is not something I can do once and never worry about again. I have a tendency to take things back from God. I have to choose to give all of myself repeatedly, every time I realize that I am living as though some of my life is my own to do with as I please. It's not. Today my prayer is that I hold nothing back, and that I always remember that once I have given myself to God, I am His to use as He desires. He can do whatever He wants with the gift. And that includes removing some things from my life that I might have preferred to hold onto for a little while.