Hold Lightly What You Value Greatly

I learned this truth the hard way twenty years ago. It happened in another time and another place when I thought I was on top of the world. Everything looked so good to me. One day a friend dropped by to see me. “Do you have a few minutes to talk, Pastor Ray?” “Of course,” I replied, “Come in.” After a few minutes of conversation, she came to her point. “Pastor Ray, you have to let go. You’re holding on too tightly.”

How a Good Thing Becomes an Idol

It was one of those moments where from the first word of that sentence I knew exactly what she was going to say. And I knew she was right. Deep in my heart, I had known it for a long time but didn’t want to face the truth. I was holding on to something so tightly that it had become an idol to me, something dearer than life itself. Before you ask, let me say simply that the thing was not evil or bad. In fact, it was a good thing that had become an idol that I dared not give up. (An idol is anything good that becomes too important in your life.)

One year passed and things in my little world began to fall apart. Through a long string of circumstances I found myself facing a tragedy. Looking back I can see clearly that God was prying my fingers off that “thing” one by one. But when he got down to the thumb, I fought back. I didn’t want to give it up. But God is stronger than any man and eventually he pulled my thumb off. As the wise man said, your arms are too short to box with God. I gave my idol back to him, but when I gave it back, I saw clearly that it was no pagan idol, but something good that had become too important in my life. In the end God took back that which had always belonged to him in the first place.

One Sunday afternoon during this personal crisis I took a long walk and began to meditate on 1 Peter 4:19 (NIV), “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good." The little phrase “according to God’s will” caught my attention. I realized that it had been many years since I had been concerned about doing God’s will. Once that had been a consuming passion; now I hardly ever thought about it.

And I remembered my friend’s admonition: “Ray, you need to let go.” As I walked, I held out an open palm and began to let go. Little by little, I released the things in my life that I had been holding onto so tightly. As I did, I felt an enormous sense of relief, as if God were saying, “It’s about time.”

God orchestrates the affairs of life—both the good and the bad—to bring us to the place where our faith will be in him alone. Slowly but surely as we go through life, he weans us away from the things of the world. At first the process touches only our possessions (which we can replace), but eventually it touches our relationships (which may not be replaced), then it touches our loved ones (who cannot be replaced), finally it touches life itself (which is never replaced). Then there is nothing left but us and God.

Through all this process our Heavenly Father leads us along the pathway of complete trust in him. Slowly but surely we discover that the things we thought we couldn’t live without don’t matter as much as we thought they did. Even the dearest and sweetest things of life take second place to the pleasure of knowing God. In the end we discover that he has emptied our hands of everything and then filled them with himself.