April 7, 2014

Good Monday Morning To You!

We're almost there! This is week five and I pray this day finds you blessed and better having taken this Lenten Journey to the Cross: Remembering Jesus.  I also hope you were enriched personally and spiritually by finding some way to just help somebody.  It's through service to others that we can find our greatest fulfillment.

As I write, I am learning my own personal lesson in this week's discipline. I am at Eden Hospital in Castro Valley with my mother who was brought to emergency room for a sudden loss of consciousness. When I got the call, I dropped everything to meet the ambulance at the emergency room. As I waited to be allowed to see her, I came face to face with my own humanity and powerlessness.  There are moments in life when we become painfully aware of our humanity, our frailty, the vapor that we call life.  In that same moment, I was grateful for the Journey. I recalled our scriptures on Surrender and simply rested on the reality of God.  Be encouraged no matter what you face because there is a God!

This week our focus is on the dreaded "S" word: Submission.  Yes, I said it...Submission.  I am not sure there is another discipline so misunderstood and abused as Submission.  It is a concept that has been used as a weapon of power, control and domination.  As a result, many have missed out on the freedom that comes with willingly practicing this discipline in their daily lives.

In the New Testament, the word submission is a compound of two Greek words. Hupó means under or beneath and Tàssō means to arrange in order.  Together, hupotasso means to place oneself in order, to defer or as we commonly understand it, to yield.  We willingly yield ourselves.

Richard Foster suggests there is a freedom that comes with submission. "I said that every Discipline has its corresponding freedom.  What freedom corresponds to submission? It is the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get our own way. The obsession to demand that things go the way we want them to go is one of the greatest bondages in human society today. People will spend weeks, months, even years in a perpetual stew because some little thing did not go as they wished. They will fuss and fume. They will get mad about it. They will act as if their life hangs on the issue.  They may even get an ulcer over it.  In the Discipline of submission we are released to drop the matter, to forget it. Frankly, most things in life are not nearly as important as we think they are. Our lives will not come to an end if this or that does not happen."¹

For me, perhaps the best biblical picture of submission is found in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prayed with a freedom I wish many of us prayed. He was honest and transparent telling God, His Father that the way of the cross was not what He desired.  In Matthew 26:39, it says, "And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt".

How often do we feel this way? What areas or situations are we being called to yield our will to? As we read, reflect and respond to this week's daily scripture, let's pray that the Holy Spirit shows us ourselves and those areas where we need to yield.

Monday - John 2:1-11

 Tuesday - John 8:31-36    

Wednesday - Matthew 26:36-46

Thursday - John 12:24-26   

Friday - Matthew 5:38-48  .

Saturday - Philippians 2:1-11  

Sunday - (Worship)

There are many areas where we can practice this discipline: Submission to God, Submission to Scripture, Submission to our Family, Submission to our Neighbors, Submission to God's Church, Submission to the Least and the Lost.  This week, let's ask God to heal us, restore us and help us yield in the areas where the Holy Spirit is leading.  Blessings to you this week! We are bound for the Cross. 

I'm still at the hospital. Deaconess Green is sleeping. My sister and niece are talking and I am grateful for a God who allows us to cast all our cares upon Him knowing that He cares about everything concerning us. Keep us in prayer!

Let's Grow!

Dr. Jacqueline A. Thompson

Assistant Pastor