I Give Up

Some time ago, I was listening to the radio, and a song came on that I just could not abide, so I switched stations. There are really only a few Christian stations in my area, and only one of them plays music all the time. There is another one that plays music sometimes, and the others are Christian talk stations. The station that I switched to was the station that plays music sometimes, but they weren’t playing music right then. There was a guy on the radio talking about becoming aware that there was something in his life that he needed to give up. He wasn’t sure what it was, or why he was so reluctant to give it up—whenever he considered it, he felt a sense of loss, as though giving this up would cost him something—but he was sure that he would be better off without this mysterious something. He said that, in prayer, he felt Jesus come to him, and that he and Jesus took a tour of his heart. During this tour, his heart was characterized as a home (which makes sense), and eventually, Jesus told him that there was something in the closet on the second floor that needed to go. He cried out to Jesus that he understood that it had to go, but that he just didn’t have the strength to get rid of it himself. Jesus told him that was okay, He would take care of it, He just needed his permission. This man agreed immediately, but asked only that he not have to look at whatever it was when Jesus took it away. Jesus nodded, and, a few minutes later, opened the closet door, to show that there was no longer anything in it. This man said he felt a tremendous relief. By the way, some of preceding may sound outright crazy to some of you, let me assure you that it is not; a lot of the terms used are normally considered to be physical objects, but spoken language doesn’t always lend itself to the spiritual realm.

I gave that a lot of thought. I’m not sure that my imagination is active enough to go through all of that, but it occurred to me that there were probably things in my life that were holding me back, but that I would never be able to bring myself to part with, at least, not if I had to consider what it was and what it might cost me to give it up. I will admit it, there have been times that I have hung onto things that I knew I didn’t need just because I didn’t want to miss out. Rich Mullins wrote a song lyric once a long time ago that said, “I’d rather fight you for something I don’t really want than to take what you give that I need.” I think that line resonates with a lot of people because we’ve all been there, even if we don’t realize that’s what we’re doing at the time.

That night, I spent some time in prayer, asking Jesus to take from my life anything that I was hoarding (even things that I wasn’t aware of), that I wouldn’t be able to surrender on my own. I asked Him to just take it, clean it up, and to not let me see it; that I didn’t even want to know what it was. In retrospect, I kind of wish now that I knew what it was that He took from me (although I would probably feel a tremendous sense of loss), so that maybe I could help somebody else understand why they shouldn’t be carrying that around, either. In any case, I know that there are temptations that I have spent hours fighting (and not necessarily successfully) that just don’t bother me anymore. I’m not going to go into what sort of temptations I’m talking about, because, quite frankly, I’m embarrassed about it. I know this, though, the temptations that have taken me are common to man.