Don't Strive, Surrender

I've been thinking about several things that I read this morning. I read several different daily "meditations," and I usually agree and get a lot out of them. Obviously if I have a daily reading source that I disagree with a lot, I stop using it. But this morning, I had the interesting experience of agreeing at first, and then almost vehemently disagreeing as I mulled over and chewed on what I'd read.

"'If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.' The eye of the soul is the will. If your will is to do the will of God, to serve Him with your life, to serve Him by helping others, then truly shall your whole body be full of light. The important thing is to strive to attune your will to the will of God, a single eye to God's purpose, desiring nothing less than His purposes be fulfilled. Try to seek in all things the advance of His kingdom, seek the spiritual values of honesty and purity, unselfishness and love, and earnestly desire spiritual growth. Then your life will emerge from the darkness of futility into the light of victory."

That is one of the meditations I read this morning, and as I stated earlier, I agreed at first. It looks good and right from the surface. But maybe by spending some time really thinking about what it says and the implications I "tested" the spirit of the writing and found it to be untrue. "The important thing is to strive to attune your will to the will of God, a single eye to God's purpose, desiring nothing less than His purposes be fulfilled. Try to seek in all things the advance of His kingdom, seek the spiritual values of honesty and purity, unselfishness and love, and earnestly desire spiritual growth." This is where I see a problem.

I don't believe it is spiritually sound for me to strive to align my will with God's. For one thing, Step 10 promises say that by this time I have ceased fighting ANYTHING OR ANYONE. Striving to align my will with God's is a fight. I am fighting against my old nature to try to do what I know is right. It sounds like a good idea, but it is still fighting, so something must be off. So I thought about is some more and realized that for me to strive to align my will with God's implies that I can do that. I can't. If I could change my will and simply align my will with God's I would not need Christ. By trying to do that myself, I am trying to control something I can not control (and have no business trying to control if I have done a true Step 3 and turned my will and my life over to the care of God).

That's just it. I am not to strive to be good or right or align my will. I am to turn my will over to the care of God. Quite simply, my striving won't make me a good person. Been there; failed at that. But my laying my will on the altar and allowing it to be put to death gets me out of the way of my High Priest. It creates a void in me where God can then place His will within me. I don't have to fight or strive. I simply have to surrender. Not by might nor by power but by My Spirit says the Lord.

Anytime I look at a spiritual idea as though there is something I can do under my own power to get closer to God or to walk with Him, I am heading of the path and onto a slippery slope that can only lead to destruction. If I strive to align my will to God's, it won't be long before my selfish will decides it has a better idea than my Creator has for me. But if I give my will to God, then He gives me the power and desire, by grace, to do His will. A subtle but important distinction.