WHAT SHALL I RETURN TO THE LORD?

Photo Credit: Ralph Felzer

WHAT SHALL I RETURN TO THE LORD?

Do me a little favor as we get started, would you?  Take just a minute and consider how good God has been to you.  Not just that He's been good to you, but the delightful, precious gifts–however big or small they may be–that you are grateful for.  Go ahead, I'll be here when you get back!

….

Ah, there you are!  Surprising, isn't it, just how much there is?  And it's not all sweetness and roses either, is it?  And yet, we still find that God finds ways to use even the difficult things, even the painful things, to bless us.  In fact, you might very well be in one of those tight spots right now.  So consider God's track record, not just with you, but all down through the years!  Decade after decade.  Century after century.  Millenium after millenium!  God is in the business of taking all the stuff of this life here "under the sun" and using it to make something beautiful, to shape, form, and bless His people.  You can count on that.  You can "take that to the bank," as my dad used to say.

In fact, it occurs to me that God is always looking for ways to bless us!  And though sometimes He does so without any advanced notice, just dropping some delightful morsel in our laps, more often than not He doesn't intrude upon us.  He doesn't barge in.  He doesn't slide down the chimney and leave presents under our tree.  No, God is a gentleman.

But He's a gentleman, not a butler.  And that makes Him a little difficult to figure out at times because He doesn't always jump to our aid in quite the way we expect.  If you're at all like me (and I suspect you are!) that's often pretty tough to handle.

I was thinking about this the other day as I was spending my few minutes with the Lord in the morning–remember those two minutes we've been taking at Sunday morning worship from time to time lately?  I do about five minutes most mornings, and what I really, really like about that time is the "no agenda" part.  I just love opening my hands and quietly saying to Him, "Be it done to me according to Your word," or "Into Thy hands," or "I give You permission to do whatever You like in me and with me."  

It hasn't always been easy for me to pray this openly and vulnerably.  It took me years–and years–after I had cancer to pray that openly, to invite God to do whatever He wanted to with me.  I'm not proud of it.  It was a great weakness in me, and I was terribly fearful for a long time, but it was what it was, and God didn't turn His face away.  I just wound up limiting His access to my heart and life, and that likely hurt me more than it did Him.

But I do pray that way now, almost every morning.  I don't usually ask for anything.  Instead, I just give Him permission–access–to my heart and mind.  And over the last several months I wouldn't say that I have a truckload of answered prayer (because I haven't really been asking for anything specific–although I do ask, I just don't ask during that part of my time with Him).  What I have found is an intimacy with God, a relationship with Him in which He opens the Scriptures in new ways, lays ideas on my heart or in my mind (which I write down and then just go back to quietly offering myself), or just a sense of beauty and stillness and ... presence.  And the really cool thing is how all of that shapes me!  I am becoming a different man.  I am becoming increasingly calm and joyful and trusting of Him.  And I can't tell you how grateful I am for that!

And that leads me to the main thing I want to share with you today.  I find myself these days wanting to find a way to make a return to the Lord for all His goodness to me.  Remember those things you gave thanks for a minute or two ago?  What if, together, we thoughtfully considered how we might make a free thanksgiving offering to the Lord?

I was thinking earlier about how we might do this.  I considered David's thoughts in Psalm 116:  "What shall I return to the Lord for all His bounty toward me?  I will offer to You a thanksgiving sacrifice and call on the name of the Lord" (vv. 12, 17).  And the other day I found this while reading Psalm 76, "But You indeed are awesome!  Make vows to the Lord your God, and perform them; let all who are around Him bring gifts to the One who is awesome!" (vv. 7a, 11).  

I don't know how exactly I'm going to do this or what my offering will be, but it will be a freewill offering, something I do for God just because I love Him and He's been good to me.  I sense that He wants me to do this, but whatever I do will be entirely up to me! 

Even though I haven't done it yet (or even decided what to do!) I'm excited to do it.  I'm getting excited to do something for Him in the same way I used to get excited to give my mom or my dad a gift for their birthday or at Christmas time (especially when I was little and they didn't expect anything from me!).

What could you do?  And let me encourage you here too–keep it a secret, just between you and God!  Yeah, I know, I already told you I'm doing something–but I didn't tell you what I'm going to do!

I'll leave it up to you to sort out what you'd like to do, but let me just offer you a word of encouragement as you consider your response: Do not fret about what God wants you to do!  Sometimes we get so caught up in being obedient that we lose our simple, joyful, childlike desire to please God.  I was telling someone the other day that I think we get obedience all wrong much of the time.  It's as if God said to us, "What are you doing inside on such a glorious day!  Go outside and play!"  And then we wrinkle our brow and start to worry and wring our hands:  "What does He mean by 'play'?  Can I ride my bike?  Am I allowed to go across the street?  Can I do it on my own or do I have to ask somebody to come play with me?"  Oh my gosh!  We get so caught up in trying to figure out "What's the right thing to do?" or "Is it okay to do this?" or "Is this the wrong way to do this?"

You know how you love to give good gifts to your husband, wife, children or anyone else you love? Not for any reason at all, but just because.... Let's do that! Let's surprise God with a free gift of love and gratitude! (I know, can we really surprise God? Well, let's try, we can at least make a game of it!)

What I love about this "exercise" (for lack of a better word) is that this is entirely a freewill offering on our part, something we're doing for God just because we love Him and He's been so, so good to us.  How might our devotion to God, our love for Him, our excitement to serve Him and others be transformed by doing something as simple as finding a way to say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!  You are awesome!  You have been so good to me, even in the hard times!"

I hope that one day soon we can find a way to share with one another what new roads into joy and intimacy with God have opened up in us simply because we've learned to be grateful.

Be encouraged, friend, for God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, who spoke all worlds into being, is both with you and for you.