What to do When God Asks for More Than You Can Give

When I was 18, I asked my high school youth leader, “What if God asks me to marry someone I don’t love?”

His questioning reply was, “Why do you think he would do that?”

My response: “He did to Esther.”

See, I’ve known from the time I was very young that my life was not my own.  From the time I was 9 and decided that God was telling me to become a missionary, I have imagined my life ending early à la Jim Elliot.  Now, I may never marry someone I don’t love and I may live a long, peaceful life, but the point of those stories is that I came to grips early on with the fact that following Christ meant that I was choosing to obey His plan and His will, rather than my own.  I have always known that I would sacrifice a lot to follow Christ.  I knew that God would ask difficult things of me, and that it would be worth it.  But knowing that does not make living it out any easier.

A few months ago I was presented with an opportunity to serve God overseas.  At first, it seemed the perfect opportunity, but as I realized what exactly this would entail I struggled with questions of first whether I was capable and second whether I was ready to make the sacrifices to pursue this.  It feels as though God has asked me to give more than I am capable of.  It has been a long, difficult road filled with soul searching and spiritual battles.  And I’m not at the end of it yet.  Honestly I’ve been struggling for over a month to write this blog post because I simply did not know the answer to the title question. 

What do you do when God asks for more than you can give?  I can’t answer that for you, maybe I can’t answer that at all, but I can tell you what I have been doing through this process.

#1. Remind myself of truth amongst the chaos of my mind.  Truth: I am hurting over what God is asking of me.  Truth: I am loved completely by God.  Truth: God is good.  Truth: My life is not about me.

Some of these truths are comforting, some are hard, some resonate deeply, and some feel so far away right now.  But they are true and truth is solid.  Amongst my chaotic, shifting thoughts and emotions, I can stand on these truths.  They are my guiding stars.

Which leads me to #2: Praise God through the tears.  Yes, I am hurting.  My heart feels like it is breaking over the things God is asking me to give up.  But I will honor and glorify him through the tears.  I will continue to sing his praises.  Because even though I do not feel like God is good at the moment, I know that he is.  Deep to my very soul, I know the truth. 

Therefore #3: I will obey.  Based on the truth of who God is, I chose a long time ago that I would obey him, no matter what.  And so through my tears and my hurt and my heartbreak, I will obey.  Because God is still better.  I wrote in my last blog post that following God costs everything.  I certainly wasn’t lying about that.  But I also said, and believe, that in following God I gain everything and more.

There are things that I want and things that I need.  Right now, there are two paths before me and each of them has a cost.  In one, I foresee the cost will be at least temporarily losing my family, my friends, everything that makes me comfortable and everything I know and love.  In the other, the cost seems to be losing the depth of my relationship with God.  It would break my heart to lose my family and friends, but it would break me completely to lose God.  I don’t want to lose my family.  I cannot lose God.

This has been an extraordinarily trying season of life for me.  I have felt as though God was asking more of me than I could give.  I have cried a little a lot and cried out to God even more.  But ultimately, I trust God implicitly.  I trust his plans and I trust his character.  And so even through the tears, even through the fear, even through whatever comes my way, I will say “yes” to anything God asks of me.

Count the Cost

Choosing to be a Christian is the easiest, and most difficult, action in the world.  On the one hand, all it requires is making a decision in your heart and saying a prayer.  Romans 10:9 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  It truly is that simple.

…Yes, it is simple, but I should not confuse simple for easy.  Because following Christ is also the most difficult thing I could have ever chosen to do.

Christ demands all of me.  When I declared that “Jesus is my Lord” I willingly submitted my whole life to him.  Every action, every thought is now His to command.  In Mark 12:17, Jesus says to “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”  When Jesus died to pay the price for my sins, and I chose to accept that sacrifice by giving my life to Christ, I became His and His alone.  My life, my thoughts, my very soul is God’s.  So before making a decision about whether you want this life, or if you are currently contemplating whether this life is worth the sacrifices, I would encourage anyone to count the cost.  Do not be deceived, there are sacrifices to be made and they are not insignificant.  In Mark 13:9, Jesus says that followers of Christ “will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues.  On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.”  Other verses speak about the numerous hardships that Christians will experience.

Yet the sacrifices that God requires of me are not only that I will experience persecution.  Personally, some of the sacrifices he has called me to make are to actively give up my illusion of independence and autonomy.  He has asked me to give up friendships and my pride and security and just recently he asked me to say no (at least for now) to a dream I’ve held dear for the past decade.  And these things are hard, and it hurts, and I don’t always understand.  Following Christ costs me everything.  It costs me my very self.  But following Christ?  It gives me everything and more.

Following Christ has given me hope and joy and an assurance of unconditional love.  It gives me purpose.  I know that I am part of something so much bigger than myself.  Most importantly, I know that I can trust God and His plan.  I don’t always understand, but I know the character of God and I know that He is good and I know that he loves me enough that he died for me.  And so, most of the time (I’m certainly not perfect at it!), I obey.

We sang So Will I by Hillsong United at church this week, and that song has resonated with me over the past few days.  That song, like my walk with God, is all about choice.  It has always been my choice.  God will never force me to follow him, or to obey him.  But it is all about natural consequences (oh, how my high school loved that phrase!).  I cannot receive the rewards of obedience without the act of obedience.  And so I choose.  If creation sings your praises so will I.  If creation still obeys you so will I.  If the stars were made to worship so will I. 

I honestly can’t explain it.  To someone on the outside I must seem certifiably insane.  But all I can say is that once you’ve had the experience of being close to God, you understand. It is something I could never bear to lose.  And every time I choose to obey, God proves himself to be faithful.  No matter what I give up, it is never as amazing as what he has in store for me.  It is never as amazing as just being with Him.

Let me let you in on a little secret: the true reward of Christianity isn’t heaven, it’s God.  It isn’t living forever; it’s being with Jesus.  And I wouldn’t change that for anything.

Every time God asks me to give something up, a part of me asks, is it worth it?  Is He worth it?  For me, the answer has always been yes, and it always will be.