I will never forget my first job working at a research lab just before graduating college. You would think that after all the long hours of studying some of the most obscure topics imaginable that the chance to actually apply all of this abstract knowledge would be a dream come true. Reality soon set in when I found myself sitting in a small concrete room for hours at a time reducing tissue cells to ‘mush’ with a metal device called a ‘sonicator’. At first it was pretty cool I must admit – but my enthusiasm at best only annoyed the long since jaded post-doctoral researchers who pretty much hated life in general. At one point one of the post-docs took me aside and yelled at me, “You think this is all just some cool experiment don’t you!! But this is our life... OUR LIFE!!” Suddenly it dawned on me that I may have chosen the wrong career path…
Sitting in that concrete room turning cell samples into little more than slime I thought at times that a more dreary existence was not possible. College it turned out was not what I had expected – and the long hours I spent in isolation provided a time for reflection and meditation – certainly life had to be more than this… As far as faith was concerned – I was a Christian who genuinely loved God, but until that point never really understood how faith and life were meant to be seamlessly intertwined. Somehow I felt that life was lacking for me because my faith was not truly a part of it – and the only solution to the problem was complete and total devotion to God. I needed to take my hands off the wheel of life, and let God begin to direct and lead me where He wanted me to go.
I believe that as we grow in our relationship with God that He continually reveals to us what it means to be abandoned to Him. Jesus said in Matthew 16:25, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” I had to ask myself in that concrete room – is my life really about Jesus Christ? It was as if God was asking me the same question that He asked Peter three times after His resurrection, “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?” God knew that I loved Him – but wanted me to understand maturity in the same way He wanted Peter to understand it when He said, “When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” –John 21:18
Much like Peter, I had spent my life up until the end of college basically directing my own steps. Even though I loved God and did all the things that a ‘Christian’ is supposed to do – I didn’t know what it was like to rely on God. When it came right down to it, all my actions on a daily basis revealed what I truly believed in my heart – that I was the architect of my own destiny. At the conclusion of my efforts I looked at that slimy cell preparation and realized that I no longer wanted to be the architect of my own destiny! After all my hard work, sleepless nights, fear and anxiety over grades – suddenly the scripture became very real to me, “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”-Psalm 127:1-2
I soon discovered that the secret to experiencing God is simply surrendering to Him. For me that meant abandoning the plans I had made for the rest of my life and beginning to ask Him, “What do you want me to do today?” Scripture says in Romans 8:14, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” The choice to abandon my life to God and live moment by moment revealed a beauty in life and nature that I had never before known. The Spirit of God suddenly became a very real and tangible element of reality that changed my perception of things around me. I was amazed that a simple change in my heart attitude could so drastically alter everything around me. Even though I was locked up in a concrete room, the reality of 2nd Corrinthians 3:17 hit me, “…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
