Saying yes

Finally, the mountain of work has been conquered and the book (yes the mountain is a book of sorts) goes into printing tomorrow. I've had to work almost every day while I was in Melbourne (just got back Saturday night) but thank God for movable deadlines where the impossible is made possible.

I am humbled by how the Lord knows exactly what I need and provides so generously. And I am encouraged to keep saying yes, even when I say yes to things that scare me and that I do not think I am good enough to tackle them.

This has been my biggest learning lesson of the summer.

In the movie Out of Africa, Karen Blixen makes this wry comment: "When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers."

I used to subscribe to that cynical view on life. Now looking at the quote, I see that the operative word is "gods", not God.

Anyone who has tried to serve two masters or worship false idols will know that choosing something or a course of action that stems from selfish desires may bring joy, but it also brings with it suffering - usually to those around him, if not to the chooser himself or herself.

Over lunch today, C. just shared with me that someone we both know, a staunch Christian in the past, has now chosen to abandon his role as husband and father in order to pursue his own personal happiness.

It made me stop to think how easy it is to stop saying yes to God and to say yes instead to the pursuit of self pleasures.

How easy it is to forget that Jesus really loves us and He wants only good things for us, that it's never in His plan to make us suffer.

How easy to take such an unselfish love for granted and not treasure the very thing we are seeking for in life.

How easy to fall from grace.

So what is it that can change the hearts and minds of good, even great people, and make them do a 180 degree turn, eschewing all they chose and worked for previously?

A lot hinges on how we view God. Do we view Him as vengeful, a policeman god who will punish us for our transgressions?

Or as a Santa Claus god to whom we pray only when we want something from Him?

Or a watchmaker god who creates the world and then steps back and lets it function on its own, a benevolent but distant being?

I used to think God was all of the above until I experienced first-hand that compassionate, merciful, unconditional love that the psalmists write about in the book of Psalms.

It was like falling in love for the very first time - a special and unique, never-before experienced event - so memorable that the event is burned indelibly in my consciousness. A true burning bush experience.

But like all memories, it can get displaced by wants and desires and even such a deep, personal experience of love can be discounted and forgotten.

And so it's important to say yes every new day, building on the first time I said yes to Jesus as I accepted his warm embrace of love.

Saying yes involves hard work. It's not an action I carry out on principle, on "blind faith". I have to work at getting to know Jesus as a person, what are His Father's plans for me and constantly finetune my ability to discern how the Spirit moves in my life.

It's all about making informed decisions and choices in life every step of the way.

This also involves getting to know myself and understanding myself better as a person, accepting myself, the good and the bad, and having the courage to allow Him to mould me as He wills.

The latter is the most difficult for it requires purification and reformation, which, at times, can be most painful. So why do it you may ask?

No one else in this world will love me with such depth and kindness - who accepts me for who I am and who is always there for me, till the end of time and beyond.

Now how can I say no to that?