Surrendering My Agenda

If you have read any of my posts it may not come as a surprise to you that I like to know what’s coming next. I enjoy learning what the future might look like and dreaming of all the possibilities. Once I am focused on what I perceive is next for the future, it’s hard to focus on much else. I just want to get started on my list of things that I assume will be steps to achieve this next thing.

This is why I love check lists. I feel so accomplished when I check items of the list. It makes me feel like I am moving forward. I have always had a list in my mind about my life. It started when I was young. Find a man who loves me. Marry him. Be a happy housewife. Have kids and live happily ever after. It sounds nice but that wasn’t reality and the more I pressed that agenda the more miserable I became. I thought I had my life under control and I didn’t need God’s plan. I had my own. At the time there were red flags that my plan wasn’t going to work but I careened down the road excited to check things off my list. It should have been obvious to me that my execution of the plan was going to be severely flawed. I was so convinced that my agenda was good. That I could do a good job directing my own steps. Boy was I wrong! (There are several blog posts on my site to share just how wrong I was.)

Proverbs 16:9 We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it. We may have a plan in mind how to produce the best lives for ourselves but only in following God’s plan can we live it. The more I pushed my agenda and demanded God to give His approval, the more I failed to make it all work. All I created were messes that did not line up with my checklist. 

Always having an agenda for my life and the lives of those around me is frustrating.  People don’t often do what I expect them to do. Then there’s the agenda I’ve had for God…I can’t say that I have ever gotten Him to sign off on my plans either.  He has let me pursue what I have wanted but it has come with consequences and discipline. Recently, I have come to realize that always having an agenda is all about me being in control.  More than a strong desire to have others do things my way, it’s an all out expectation.  Several problems with that.  One, not many people want to live under another’s thumb.  Second, one who always tries to control others will never have a deep relationship because there’s always pressure to make them conform to my agenda. It’s not mutual relationship. It’s one sided.

Seeing this in my relationships with my hubby and my girls, I am coming to realize how damaging it’s been. And how distant I become not getting my way. It was so subtle that I had trouble seeing it for what it was. Pride. I perceived that my good intentions (getting things done right because they were done my way) were helpful. After all, if I have a way that works shouldn’t I share it? But expecting to have control over others doesn’t create healthy relationships. It also doesn’t create a healthy relationship with God.

Just read Psalm 104 and see how futile it is to try and control God. At His word creation happened. He controls the universes. He set in motion our planet. He created it all and He created us. He created us knowing exactly how our minds and bodies work. He created us knowing the beginning of time to the end of time and our time in between. He holds time and space in His hand. When life seems like an eternity to us He knows that this life, however long for us, is just a vapor. He sees both us and the expanse of time. Having all that knowledge and understanding of how things work, how is it that I think that, in my limited, finite thinking, that I might now how to best meet all my needs and the needs of those around me? How would I know what the best solution is for every answer if I can’t see beyond this moment? My frame of thinking is so temporary. It’s feelings based and selfish. I want what I want because I think it’s best for all involved. My prideful heart filled with arrogant belief that I am better at being god than God is. After typing this paragraph I am again reminded how silly I am trying to control God. Not only is it silly, it’s sin.

I wouldn’t have called it pride up until a few months ago. I thought it was more a thoughtful way to giving God great options on how to answer my prayers. I thought it was praying with hopeful expectation, which I think is scriptural. But when I pray, giving God my suggestions, then sitting back waiting for Him to obey me, getting angry when He doesn’t do what I asked, that is sin. There is no way around it. We have to call it what it is. It’s ugly and it causes me to doubt God’s good plan for me, when I demand He answer my way. It creates separation from Him on my side of the relationship. It will continue to damage my perspective on God’s love for me and His plan for me, until I surrender my agenda and allow Him to move on my behalf, the way He sees best.

Ephesians 3:20 Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us… What a great verse for those times we want to control God! He is able to do more than and greater things than I can ask or imagine. I can’t even dream up the things He is able to do! And if He is capable of such grand thought, why would I want the small, short sighted, less than solutions I come up with? Why should I worry about tomorrow if He has great answers for those problems I’ll encounter?

I love Romans 8. It’s power packed, hope-filled and it super charges my faith. In verse 18 the chapter begins to tell about how life is hard and we struggle and suffer but we can have hope in what’s to come. When we are in Christ, fully trusting in his atoning work in us, we can know, that what is to come far out weighs the difficulties here. Then in verse 26 we are reminded that even as we pray the Holy spirit intercedes for us. Praying God’s perfect will over our lives. Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  Friends, this is an amazing promise! He works all things for our good, when we are in Christ! How many exclamation points are too many when we hear that kind of promise? It’s hard to refrain and limit my use of them! The following verses are even more exciting when we see that NOTHING no NOTHING can separate us from Christ’s love for us. That love is what propels His desire to move on our behalf. Nothing can change that. I can’t make God love me more or less. I can’t behave in a way that God won’t fight for me. I can choose to do it my way and not let Him work for me. That doesn’t change His love for me but it will change the outcomes in my life and my eternity, if I do the work or He does the work.

Notice also, we are not striving to do something to have this promise. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us. God works for our good. Isaiah 30:15 For the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has said: “You will be delivered by returning and resting; your strength will lie in quiet confidence. But you are not willing.” Israel was doing exactly what I do. They were trying to solve all their problems without God. They ran to other nations for help. God tells them that it’s not in their efforts and solutions that deliverance comes. It’s in allowing God to be God (returning) and trusting in His provision for their needs (rest). Their confidence was in God’s great plan for their lives not coming up with a human answer and demanding God to move that particular way.

One verse I think of often when I think of surrendering my agenda is Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. He does the saving. He delights in me and in His love, He removes the rebuke and sings over me. Like a mother holding her baby, singing sweetly and lovingly, God sings over me so that in my resting in Him, I am comforted.

I am learning to surrender my agenda. I am asking God to forgive me for constantly trying to dictate how He answers me. I am reminding myself, at every thought of my needs, that my Abba is more than able to answer with infinite solutions that are for my best good. I wish I could be instantly perfect at this, but I am not. I am resting in God’s work in me too. He will challenge me when I am out of line. I pray that each time He does, I hear and I will be quick to repent and rest in God’s good plan for me.