I don’t know about you, but, for me, this tendency repeatedly holds true. It’s how I can so easily take for granted what God has given me, and it is usually in the process of losing the gift that I finally realize the value of the gift.
It has been said, “You don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” I have often said, “Whatever you devalue, you eventually lose.”
Now, perhaps you can relate to what I am saying, and you are right now living out these painful platitudes from personal experience. Maybe you even lost someone you loved because you took them for granted.
I think with a 50% divorce rate, there’s plenty of regret to go around. Perhaps it was a position you held, a valued job, or mismanagement of your finances. Regret can weigh you down, especially if what was lost seems irreplaceable, and it just may be that way.
But God.
You see, when you add God to any situation, equation, or relation, you are throwing off the odds of impossibility and entering the arena of the miraculous.
“But Jesus looked at them and said to them, with men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
In other words, no matter the item lost, years wasted, the talent misused, or the person taken for granted, God can restore the years eaten by the locust (Joel 2:25).
Not only does He restore years, but He realigns our hearts, so we can better see the gross error of devaluing what is valuable, or in some cases, that which was invaluable.
For many, it may be too late because that season has passed or that person is long gone, but nothing is wasteful to a God who is faithful. He takes everything, and I mean everything, and He uses it to reframe our focus and get us to look more like Jesus. He wants our perspective to be constantly appreciative with what He has given us, and He wants our character to take the shape of Jesus.
How do we do this?
Ultimately, it is when we entrust our lives (and everything attached to our lives) to God’s hands, that we are trusting His hands to be safer than our best-intended plans.
I know all that I am and all that He has given me is better off given back to Him to govern for His glory, but I also know how hard this “casting” back to Him can be. Why? Because I am made of flesh and the focus of my mentality, without Jesus, is me-centered. When the “me in me” wins, others always lose.
The Apostle Paul would write, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Therein lies a difficult axiom. The secret is to lose yourself and every selfish ambition attached to you so as to gain God Himself.
However, the “me in me” dies hard, and declares civil war on soil that is already pioneered by Christ. I know this, yet how many times do I hold on and fail to give a struggle over to Jesus? Which leaves me taking my life -and everything in my life – back into my own, dead hands.
Dead hands cannot grasp the value of that which they hold.
So, I pray, “Lord, I give You my life to hold and I ask for You to give me Your hands to behold this life. Amen.”
ED. NOTE: Maher is the teaching pastor at Coastal Christian Ocean City. Social media and website: @TruthOverTrend
