If anyone else is like me, you’ll have struggled with God in an attempt to rationalize doing what you want rather than what He wants, or at least trying to figure out every last move He has set up for you. Personally, I hate not knowing what’s going to happen to me on any given day. I prefer a structured environment with no surprises so I can mentally prepare for what’s ahead.
Well, this mindset is what the song “What You Want” by Tenth Avenue North tackles. Let’s just jump into this with the opening lyrics.
Everyday I've been feeling the pressure
I always gotta know the plan
It's been a weight that I've tried to shoulder
I thought I could, but I can’t
Seriously think hard about how annoying and stressful it is to plan even the smallest things. Take a party, for instance. You have to find a place, get the food, arrange for drinks, invite all the people, make sure everyone knows where it’s at, arrange entertainment, arrange a cleanup, and deal with what’s leftover. There are hundreds of contingencies you have to be ready for, and that’s a lot of pressure for a party.
How much more do you have to think of when you try to plan out your life? There are things you’re going to have to react to that you would never even be able to consider at the start. Where there are hundreds of contingencies you might need to plan for something small, there are hundreds of thousands, or even millions, you have to look out for when you’re planning something big. And before you even start thinking you can, let me tell you that you aren’t capable of thinking of everything. None of us are.
When you think about it, and the next set of lyrics convey this, we’re wired for someone else to take control of all that, someone with an infinitely powerful mind who can see everything we’ll ever have to face.
And I'm so tired
Of chasing dreams
When I am wired to let you lead
About those first two lines, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with chasing your dreams. Many desires are placed on our hearts by God to be fulfilled, but I qualify it with this: don’t let your dreams be set completely in stone. Be ready, if God wants you to do something different, to follow after His plan instead.
You're changing my heart
To want what you want
To love how you love
And that is enough
There's no greater plan that I need to know
You only ask me to follow
When we choose to follow God, there is a renewal by the Holy Spirit, and it should change our hearts to want what God wants and to love like God loves so that we become more like Him. And really, is there anything we need to do that is more than to love how He loves? I don’t think so. I say if you truly exemplify God’s love, you’ll never go wrong. Other people might do wrong to you, but you can never do any wrong by just loving people the way God loves us.
I’ve seen so many examples of those last two lines in the Bible, wherein people called by God didn’t know the outcome of their actions but did as God asked anyway, and they were rewarded greatly because of it. One of the best examples I know of is with Abraham and Isaac. Abraham had no idea what would happen when he went up to sacrifice his son, but because he did what the Lord asked him to, not only did he strengthen his faith in God, but he also was blessed beyond measure and from him came millions of descendants. What was a heavy burden in sacrificing his son became a very light one by the end of it.
Oh, there's freedom in this surrender
I feel myself come alive
And the burden feels like a feather
When I let my agenda die
it’s incredibly freeing when you just listen to God. It takes all of your energy to try and fight against him, as Jonah found out, and it inevitably fails. But when you just follow God’s will, as Abraham did, the burden you’re granted is like a feather. At the end of the day, Abraham’s burden was to, basically, do nothing. His only job was having descendants, and he’d already started that.
Basically, what this all boils down to is that it’s so much easier to just let go and follow the plan God has already written than it is to try to throw away his plan and make your own. When you want what God wants, everything becomes so much easier.