Jesus suffers long the Bible says. Love suffers long, the Bible says. So, let’s call it that: “suffering love.” Learning how to walk in suffering love by yielding up our will and our rights.

Let me give you a biblical example. This is, I think, a great example:

The children of Israel, my family, as wonderfully stubborn as we are as a people, are being brought out of the bondage of Egypt. We get out into the desert and the wilderness and things are not going quite the way we think they should go. Now, life was not great in Egypt, but at least we had fruit and we were free to eat whatever we wanted to eat, so as long as we could afford it. But now, we are out in the desert or the wilderness and we do not even have water, let alone food. It is our right as human beings to have food and water, even if the only food we have is bread. Water and bread—that is a right. I mean, if you want me to follow You, O Mighty One, provide for our needs! That is a right that we have, or else, we can just go back to Egypt!

Now, I know that it sounds like a terrible attitude but the truth is, most people exemplify that kind of attitude often in life. They had a right, but the Lord was asking them to yield up that right. They had a right to “freedom” in Egypt, but they had to yield up that right to even survive in Egypt as a slave, living the most menial life that you can imagine. So, what are they going to listen to now that they are free from Egypt? They are out in the desert and/or wilderness—what are they going to listen to? Their hearts? Or the obvious challenge they are being met with? It is really a great example.

You have a right to have your needs met but the Lord did not want them standing, in His face, challenging Him like He was a slave master. He wanted them to learn gratefulness, thankfulness; He wanted them to learn humility, contentment. He wanted them to appreciate life and its benefits. He wanted them to learn to appreciate Him and serve Him with a heart of love and joy. But they had learned a very bad way in Egypt and that was to be cantankerous, contentious, to be argumentative, oh and so many other things—we just won’t even go into it.

This scenario is the same thing for us today. The Spirit of the Lord takes us into situations where things are difficult, in America and around the world. We are all feeling our expenses, abilities, and lifestyles reduced to a very limited lifestyle and for those who don’t like living like that, they are probably going through very difficult times and I feel bad for them. You wake up in the morning and think, “Oh, this is so great, I get to go downstairs to my apartment again today, all day, and what shall I do today, pray tell?" I guess go down and watch TV until I get tired of hearing the voices.” The contention from hardship keeps the person from being able to discern the goodness and the greatness that God would give them today in the midst of feeling bound up in their homes.

There are so many things He could have us do and if we live alone, there is time in the Bible, there is time in prayer. We could be on the phone, ministering to people that really need it, catching up on some things at home that we let go. I mean, we are not there with nothing to do. We could spend time worshipping the Lord, we could spend time investigating His ways so that when we are free to move about again, we can have a renewed heart, a renewed mind, being out in the midst of society. Things never have to overwhelm us.

Sometimes circumstances are extremely overwhelming, I understand that, but the only way you are going to make it through is through humility and submitting yourself to God’s will for you in the midst of your difficult situation.

Now, some of you might be saying, “Are you saying God puts all that on me?” I am not saying that at all because God is not quite as concerned about the circumstances as He is our heart. So, in the midst of good circumstances and bad, His will is that we learn His ways. We learn to be content in all things and in the state of being content, we are free to love God’s will at every moment.

As we love His will, we will love to be in His will, regardless of what that means. As we love His will enough to relinquish our rights, there is nothing left to create contention because we are wholly submitted to Him and we are wholly yielded to Him. As we walk in that place, allowing His Spirit to do His work in us, our love for God only grows; our love for the Kingdom only flows. Our love for being wholly yielded to the Lord becomes such an incredible way of life; we would not want to live any other way. His will is always the best will, whether it is difficult or whether it is full of joy and happiness.

The goal is more than to submit or yield; the goal is to bring ourselves into a state where the love of God can own us, where the love of God can be our rights. I would much rather have the right of His love than the right of any temporal thing. The more that we understand that value system, the happier we become in life. And the happier we become in life, that part of God that flows in and through us allows Him to enlarge the Kingdom in it, through us, and all around us, so that we can walk in what some people call an “open heaven” all the days of our life here on earth.

To be continued next week…

In Him,
Nita Johnson