I think fear is the number one thing that keeps us from a relationship with God. We are afraid that he is not good (not really). We can’t figure out how a good God lets bad things happen. If we can’t trust he’s looking out for our best interest, we can’t love him or have a close relationship.
We look at things in our lives that we like, and are terrified that if we give him permission, he’ll take them from us. Everyone says – “oh, but he’ll give you something better.” That’s easy to say, but there is a piece of us, our identity, that will disappear along with those things.
Looking back, I think of business ventures, loves of my life, and physical things that I was not willing to give up to God. For many I knew they weren’t right, and others might have been right, but they were done without God, my way on my timetable (my way not our way). I was afraid he’d say no so I didn’t ask. What do I think now, so many years later? How I wish he had just taken those things from me back when I was so scared that he would. I would have been furious and probably cursed heaven. He didn’t, and I clung to them like a lifeline. In the end they turned out to be hooks in my flesh, dragging me into a living hell and keeping me there.
In oceans of tears, you will groan, your flesh and body spent. You will say, why, why didn’t I listen? If he wants to take them, drop them like a snake. No matter what they look like now, anything would be better. He really does have something better and you really can bank on him giving it to you.