*The following is a devotion I wrote to share with the teachers I work with. I’ve modified it a bit to make more sense for you, o fearless reader of my blog. This is the first of five installments that I’m debuting this week. (I feel so fancy saying that.) All responses are welcome-as long as they are glowing reports of the content. Or the writer. I’m not picky.

I heard a pastor once reference this poem, and it so intrigued me that I had to go find it to read it for myself. After reading this poem, I thought of five phrases containing the word up that we can look at this week.

The first phrase I want to look at today is GIVE UP.

This may sound a little weird, especially with it being the New Year. This is the time of year that people make new resolutions, goals, or just generally decide to do better. It’s a clean slate, a new starting point, and a way to begin fresh. So why would we choose to give up in January?

Read 2 Corinthians 1:8-10. Paul is writing to the people in Corinth letting them know about the troubles he has faced in preaching, and he offers some very interesting insights into his troubles.

The phrase “beyond our ability to endure” implies that they couldn’t handle it. It was beyond, too much, overwhelming, etc. I’m sure Paul and his traveling buddies did everything possible to fix the situation, but it was beyond their ability. The key to this passage comes from verse 9: “(as a result of expecting to die) we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.”

What did they do? They gave up. They gave God the reins. They quit trying to solve their problems themselves and gave them to the One who raises the dead. If I’m going to ask someone to help me, it’s definitely going to be the One who was known for raising the dead.

If there is a “Christianese” phrase that annoys me the most, it’s that God won’t give us more than we can handle. I can understand and even appreciate the sentiment behind this phrase, because ultimately it’s meant as a phrase of comfort when someone is struggling. But it implies that we don’t need to depend on God because we’ve got it. After all, He doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

But Paul, and I strongly suspect everyone here, has experienced just the opposite. A dream shattered, a situation overwhelming, a relationship lost – these and many other things make life complicated. And those impossible situations to us are opportunities to God to show up. How can God show up if we don’t need Him? How can God work miracles if we can handle it? How can God change us if we are already perfect?

I love this quote by Mike Foster that I read yesterday: God doesn’t recruit from the pedestal. He recruits from the pit.

The truth is, we desperately need God. We need His presence, His guidance, His comfort, His wisdom, His peace, His compassion, and most of all His grace. And we can experience those in their fullest when we GIVE UP.

Give up your tendency to be controlling. Give up your desire to fix what you can’t. Give up trying to manipulate situations to get your desired outcome. And experience God’s goodness in its entirety.