Freely Give

So I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of New Years resolutions. 

Not because they are not a good idea. I love the possibility of a fresh start, a clean slate, a new habit yielding a new and improved you. 

I don’t like them because they are not effective. 

I mean usually. For me. 

And the expectation to come up with one that I know I can keep, let alone one that can really change me? 

Well, lets just say I have a bad track record with New Years resolutions. 

Last year I sensed it was time for a new approach. Rather that my typical attempt to start the new year off with a list of things I don’t like about myself and my feeble attempts to tackle them (stop eating sugar, exercise more, get more organized), I mustered up the courage to ask God a question.

“How can I look more like You?”

 I got a very personal answer. Say yes to Me. 

Sure the general answer is true for all of us who are following after Christ, but the specific answer looks different in the nitty gritty fingerprints our individual lives. My Year of the Yes took me many places, some seen, witnessed and shared by so many. Some were quiet adventures, triumphs of my heart that are mine alone to savor. I can attest to saying yes to God yielded some long awaited peace, but also reeked some havoc that I didn’t see coming. And though I didn’t always get it right, this saying yes to God took me to deep places with my Jesus. Secret places that I have grown to love. 

So in this wake of my Year of the yes, looking to build on its sturdy foundation, I again come to God with my question, “How can I look more like You?” 

In this year, this season, my specific and special set of circumstances? 

It’s a slow answer, but once I discern it, there is no doubt in my mind it’s spoken straight from my Father’s heart to mine. 

Freely give. 

Freely give love like I give it. Freely give grace like Me. Freely forgive even when you don’t think its deserved. Freely give of yourself to others. Your gifts, your talents, your full self. 

It sounds easy if you're God. It sounds impossible if you're me. 

Because to accomplish this feat, I have to stop doing some things. 

I have to stop trying to figure out who is going to hurt me. Stop deciding to love only the people I have tested and tried. I have to stop trying to please people and have people please me in order to win their love. I have to stop trying to fix things, myself included.  I have to cease making everything about me and quit taking things so personal. 

And therein lies my first lesson in freely giving. In order to freely give, I must first freely receive from God. His grace, love, forgiveness. His peace. His perspective. 

Freely receiving is the key that frees me from my self imposed prison of holding back, unlocking me to freely give as God has designed me to do.   

And also I need to learn to freely receive what others would give me. Sometimes this is the bigger hurdle for me. 

As I write this, I have a precious friend and sister in Christ who, at any moment, is going to leave this world and be with Jesus. Her life is this principle personified.  She freely receives and freely gives. I and so many others have been the blessed receiptants of her love and, consequently, God’s love through her. I know when my life is coming to an end, mulling around in my head will be these questions: Did I give it all I had? Did I hold myself back? Did I withhold love when I should have just went out there with guns blazing and loved with reckless abandonment? 

Freely give. Give it all. All your life. All your love. Stop holding back because of fear. Stop evaluating if it’s good enough. If your enough. If it will be returned. Just give it.

Freely.

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" Romans 8:31-32

Dedicated to Kristin Sauder