GET IN THE WAY OF ME

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

Oh God, get in the way of me.

That’s a prayer I believe I have prayed more than any other. My own flesh often keeps me from following Jesus wholeheartedly, and I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to miss any more opportunities the Lord places before me in my day-to-day life.

Friends, take one good look at the people in the world right now. As all of us pursue what we think we want, it is completely obvious that we are not happy. We are not content. We do not have peace, and what we think brings us peace is really just a week-long vacation from the mess of a life we have created and continue to choose every day.

Maybe that depiction is quite similar to how you are currently living.

The terrible trait mankind possesses is that we pursue our wants and desires in sinful and careless ways, thinking only of our own gain and happiness without giving anyone else much thought. James 3:16 says, “For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”

We are the problem. We get in the way of our own hearts.

Getting what you want is never really what you want. We are our own problem, and until we get ourselves out of the way by surrendering all to Christ, we will only create more disorder within our lives.

I have watched many times as God has used crisis to bring people to Himself. In fact, He has used crisis to get my attention back on Him as well. However, what do we typically do before surrendering and allowing God to produce what only He can? We get in our own way of fully and completely following Jesus.

We allow ourselves to be a distraction from what really matters.

What I am here to tell you today is this… Sometimes what you need most is the rain, the trial, the pain, the temptation, the doubt, the fear, the diagnosis, the brokenness, the uncertainty, and the loneliness to get you to reach your breaking point.

What I have found is that God uses those things in powerful ways to not only get in our way, but to show us a much better way. Don’t think that the Lord won’t wreck your plans before they wreck you.

What we want, what we need, can only be found in Jesus. Real life change always starts with a longing heart. You have to reach a point where you just can’t keep living how you have been. You’ve got to be so sick and tired of doing it all on your own in order to truly change.

Surrender is not just an act of repentance, it also entails receiving the new heart, the new nature, the new mindset which Jesus died to freely give to you.

So, if you’ve experienced a crisis that brought you down to your knees and caused you to break, thank the Lord for it. Jesus has your heart now, doesn’t He?

“A Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.”  (C. S. Lewis)