How Do I Know If I'm Holding Something Back From God?
Most of us keep a quiet list in our heads, even if we'd never write it down. God gets Sunday mornings, a portion of our income, and a few minutes of prayer on the good weeks. Then there's everything else: the calendar, the career plan, the way we spend our evenings, the habit we've made peace with, the relationship we'd rather not bring up. We would never say those things are off-limits to Him. We just haven't asked Him about them in a long time.
That quiet list is exactly what Pastor Evan went after on Sunday as she opened a new series at Beyond Church called Fully His. Her starting point was simple and a little uncomfortable. Jesus isn't asking to be added into our lives wherever He happens to fit. Colossians 3:4 calls Christ our life, and Paul tells the Corinthians plainly that we are not our own, because we were bought at a price. If that's true, then no part of life gets to sit outside His leadership, including our schedules, our preferences, and how quickly we respond when He speaks.
Romans 12:1 asks us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, and Pastor Evan pointed out something simple about altars that's easy to miss. An altar only works when something is actually placed on it. It's possible to spend a lot of energy asking God for more of His power, more answers, and more of His presence while the very things He has already asked us to lay down are still in our hands. We can't ask God for more while allowing everything to stay the same.
She walked through two stories from the Gospels that show how this plays out. The first is the rich young ruler in Mark 10, a man who ran to Jesus, knelt, and asked about eternal life. From the outside he had it all together, having kept the commandments since he was a boy. Mark tells us Jesus looked at him and loved him, and then put His finger on the one thing that had a hold on his heart. The man walked away sorrowful because he had great possessions. Notice that Jesus never stopped loving him. He loved him enough to tell him the truth, and He does the same with us.
The second story is the great supper in Luke 14. A man prepares a banquet, sends out the invitation, and every guest makes an excuse. One bought land, one bought oxen, and one just got married. None of those things are bad, and they sound a lot like our lives today: a house, a job, a family. The problem was never the land or the oxen. The problem was that ordinary, good things had quietly moved into first place, and when the invitation came, they answered it with "not right now." As Pastor Evan put it, when the Lord calls, even a reasonable excuse is still disobedience.
For most of us, the struggle isn't telling God no out loud. It usually looks much more respectable than that. We hear something in prayer or during a service, we agree with it, and then we file it away for a less busy week that never shows up. Pastor Evan called that lack of response one of the greatest forms of dishonor we can show the Lord, and James 1:22 says that hearing without doing actually deceives us. We walk away feeling good because we heard the word, when what He wanted was for us to do it.
The good news is that God doesn't leave us to muscle our way through this. Philippians 2:13 says He works in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure, so the same God who asks is the one who gives us the desire and the strength to follow through. Malachi describes Him as a refiner who sits with the silver. He isn't barking orders from a distance. He stays close, He knows exactly what needs to be removed, and He does it because He loves us.
Here's one thing to do this week. Sometime before Friday, put your phone in another room, open a notebook, and ask the Lord one question: "Where have I delayed responding to You?" Write down the first thing that comes to mind, whether it's a person to forgive, a conversation to have, a habit to lay down, or time with Him you keep moving to tomorrow. Then take the first concrete step on it within 24 hours. You don't need to fix the whole thing this week. You just need to stop leaving His invitation unanswered.
That quiet list is exactly what Pastor Evan went after on Sunday as she opened a new series at Beyond Church called Fully His. Her starting point was simple and a little uncomfortable. Jesus isn't asking to be added into our lives wherever He happens to fit. Colossians 3:4 calls Christ our life, and Paul tells the Corinthians plainly that we are not our own, because we were bought at a price. If that's true, then no part of life gets to sit outside His leadership, including our schedules, our preferences, and how quickly we respond when He speaks.
Romans 12:1 asks us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, and Pastor Evan pointed out something simple about altars that's easy to miss. An altar only works when something is actually placed on it. It's possible to spend a lot of energy asking God for more of His power, more answers, and more of His presence while the very things He has already asked us to lay down are still in our hands. We can't ask God for more while allowing everything to stay the same.
She walked through two stories from the Gospels that show how this plays out. The first is the rich young ruler in Mark 10, a man who ran to Jesus, knelt, and asked about eternal life. From the outside he had it all together, having kept the commandments since he was a boy. Mark tells us Jesus looked at him and loved him, and then put His finger on the one thing that had a hold on his heart. The man walked away sorrowful because he had great possessions. Notice that Jesus never stopped loving him. He loved him enough to tell him the truth, and He does the same with us.
The second story is the great supper in Luke 14. A man prepares a banquet, sends out the invitation, and every guest makes an excuse. One bought land, one bought oxen, and one just got married. None of those things are bad, and they sound a lot like our lives today: a house, a job, a family. The problem was never the land or the oxen. The problem was that ordinary, good things had quietly moved into first place, and when the invitation came, they answered it with "not right now." As Pastor Evan put it, when the Lord calls, even a reasonable excuse is still disobedience.
For most of us, the struggle isn't telling God no out loud. It usually looks much more respectable than that. We hear something in prayer or during a service, we agree with it, and then we file it away for a less busy week that never shows up. Pastor Evan called that lack of response one of the greatest forms of dishonor we can show the Lord, and James 1:22 says that hearing without doing actually deceives us. We walk away feeling good because we heard the word, when what He wanted was for us to do it.
The good news is that God doesn't leave us to muscle our way through this. Philippians 2:13 says He works in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure, so the same God who asks is the one who gives us the desire and the strength to follow through. Malachi describes Him as a refiner who sits with the silver. He isn't barking orders from a distance. He stays close, He knows exactly what needs to be removed, and He does it because He loves us.
Here's one thing to do this week. Sometime before Friday, put your phone in another room, open a notebook, and ask the Lord one question: "Where have I delayed responding to You?" Write down the first thing that comes to mind, whether it's a person to forgive, a conversation to have, a habit to lay down, or time with Him you keep moving to tomorrow. Then take the first concrete step on it within 24 hours. You don't need to fix the whole thing this week. You just need to stop leaving His invitation unanswered.