Faith and Surrender Just Out of Reach

Tomorrow I am going to the Rock and Worship Roadshow with MercyMe and Jars of Clay! I’m so excited, and I don’t have to wait in line hoping I get in because we got VIP tickets in the Jars of Clay section. A couple of weeks ago I bought two Jars of Clay CDs so that I could learn some more of their music besides their Redemption Songs CD, which is all old hymns.

Yesterday the song “Two Hands” caught my attention. The first verse and chorus are:

I’ve been living out of sanity
I’ve been splitting hairs and blurring lines
I am a house that is divided
In my heart and in my mind

I use one hand to pull You closer
The other to push You away
If I had two hands doing the same thing
Lifted high, lifted high

I realized that this song describes me, using one hand to pull God closer, and the other hand to maybe not exactly push Him away but at least to keep Him at bay. I was reminded of my third post on this blog. It was an article titled “Deep Water Faith in the Shallow End” based on a song by Casting Crowns. It’s been almost a year and a half since I wrote that post, and I feel like I’m still standing in the shallow end. Okay, maybe I’ve moved out to waist deep, but the deep water is still out of reach. The ability to walk on water so that depth is no longer an issue has not come. I know it’s possible.

I’ve seen what faith and surrender can do, yet it is just beyond the hand that wants to keep Him at arm’s length. I can see Faith (the kind with a capital F, maybe it is all caps, I’m not sure) but as a shadow I am grasping for; it is just out of reach.

When I look back ten years, or even just five, I can see a big change in my faith. I’ve grown closer to God and I am not the person I was. I have much less fear and I trust more. But as I ponder ten years from now, I wonder if I will be able to look back and see the same degree of change. Will my faith be stronger still? Will fear be entirely a thing of the past? Will I trust fully and completely?

Life is a series of hills to climb and plateaus to cross. I feel like I’m standing at the bottom of the next huge hill, but instead of climbing I keep pacing back and forth on the plateau below. I pace and look at the Church around me, concerned about the state of the Church as a whole, about errors in teaching that I see coming from those who are called pastor. I see the rise of Universalism and point to that as a problem of great concern.

But then I realize, He is not calling His Church to draw closer to Him; He is calling each individual soul to a deeper relationship. Only when individuals grasp Faith will the Church be closer to Him. Only when individuals surrender completely to His Truth will the Church surrender and be healed.

If I had two hands doing the same thing, always doing the same thing, praising Him and pulling Him closer, I could grasp the Faith and Surrender that seem just out of reach.