The Submission to Give by Ken Dean
Generous giving of ourselves replicates the life of Jesus.
On a recent trip to the Navajo Nation with a group of college students, we discussed the idea of giving ourselves. We identified the contrast between giving out of our excess, with giving when it hurts. At a high level, we agreed that the generosity we are called to involves releasing something that we highly value to someone else for their own betterment. This is an act of submission to the will of God. Our faith in the gospel message is based on Jesus’ submission – giving of his life for the sake of others. This is the ultimate situation of submitting to generosity: giving something we highly value so that others can flourish.
It was an early spring day, the sun was shining. On the cool playground, both the college students and the young Navajo children were experiencing joy through this submission to generosity. These college students had a choice – they could have spent their spring break serving themselves, but instead, they chose to submit to giving of themselves. It was evident that their investment of generosity was having an immediate return. For me, it was like watching a beautiful mountain stream of cool clear water from a source that was never ending. Like the mountain symphony of hearing water crashing against the rocks in the streambed – we can sit and listen to this abundant flow all day. During our trip, there were situations where we had an opportunity to submit to generosity. In some settings, it was easy. While working with the children at the orphanage, the generosity was overflowing – it was natural for these college students to give of their love in generous proportions. The submission to giving of ourselves was empowering.
Other times during our trip, it was more difficult to submit to generosity, like when we interacted with adults whose thoughts and opinions were unlike ours. I watched as the students listened to a speaker with a controversial message. I could see the concern on their faces as they listened to someone spoke of thoughts and actions that were incongruent with their own ideals. The beautiful mountain stream was drying up. The sights and sounds of submission to love were no longer naturally flowing. The students had a choice. They could submit to their conviction to love generously, or rein it in. They struggled to submit. We were able to talk through these experiences at our evening debriefing session – identifying the times when it was natural to submit to generous love and then when this submission to love became much more difficult. The call to submission hadn’t changed, but the effort to submit became nearly impossible.
We realized that we weren’t called to submit to other ideas, but we were called to submit to generous love. In a new way, we experienced a new understanding that submission can be one of the most difficult callings. We may feel that some people do not deserve our generous love, and yet we are called to submit. We do not submit only when it feels good, but we exercise our posture of submission to generosity out of obedience. This is when we see that God wants us to submit to His will and His plan…to submit to generous love even when difficult. We are called to produce streams of clear- mountain-spring-water generosity even when in difficult situations. These are the times when we are changing the world for God’s glory through our submission.
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as you ever can
– John Wesley
Sometimes our submission to love others generously has an immediate return. Other times we may not ever identify a return. These are the times when our faith takes over. We exercise a posture of submission because we believe this is our calling from God. These more difficult times become opportunities to pray that our submission to generous love is going to be used by God.
The manifestation of our faith is not just about God’s grace toward us, it is about living differently through submission to Christ. Through these acts of submission, we deny our flesh so that we can become more in touch with our spirit. God rearranges the priorities in our lives so that we can become less self-serving and drawn toward serving others. We can start by asking for a spirit of submission..the idols relating to self will become less powerful. The desires of our heart change.
We can move into this life of submission together. A practical first step of submitting to generosity is to ask God to reveal the areas in our lives where we may not be generous. The Holy Spirit of God will allow us to see the things we hold on to tightly: our love, our time, our money. Then to pray about what submission to generosity looks like in these specific circumstances. What is the spring break in my life? The situation where I can choose to serve myself or serve others? How will we prepare to persevere when submission feels more difficult? Our answers to these questions may take shape in our actions over time. Small steps are better than no steps. Exercising our generosity muscles should take time.
I hope you’ll help shed light on your own reasons for giving and prompt you to think more deeply about the ways you express generosity.
Oh Lord, I want to submit to your leadership by being generous.
Amen