Early today, I posted about the difficulties which often accompany a decision to surrender to God’s will. Tonight, I remembered reading the personal testimony of David MacDonald on his fabulous website. Writing about the moment he decided to give up his music career altogether and follow his call, he says the following:
In retrospect, it was the greatest moment of clarity I’ve ever had. However, as the philosopher Keirkegaard explains, there is a cost to making an “absurd” decision for God. Sometimes that which follows is hard. We step forward with “fear and trembling” (Mar 5:33, 2 Co 7:15, Phil 2:12). Abraham was not spared the dread of looking into the eyes of Issac as he lifted the knife, (Gen 22:1-19) Mary was not spared the pain of being misunderstood by Joseph (before the angel visited him – Mat 1:24); the apostles were not spared the fear of their faith as early Christians (Acts), and I was not spared emotional turmoil of giving up everything with which I identified. Nor was I spared the dread of being misunderstood by my relatives who believed I had gone mad. So the paradox of a decision for God, as Keirkegaard explains, is that the “closer we come to the Absolute, through inwardness, the less we are understood by the outside world.”
Read the testimony in full here.
So… we have learned that
- It’s very hard to surrender one’s will to the plans which God has laid;
- If we do manage to surrender our will to God, we’ll most likely face trials and tribulations — our own personal wood of Jesus,
- and we’ll be misunderstood by everyone else to boot.
Wowza, this ‘cooperating with grace’ thing is going to be even harder than I reckoned! I’m going to need prayers, lotsa prayers!
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