Little Lesson 11: It’s All Yours, God

SCRIPTURE:  Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. Exodus 19:5 ESV

THOUGHT: Sometimes you have a refrain going around in your head too, right? Maybe you call it a life verse, or your word of the year. Or maybe you don’t have a name for it, but it’s subtly there anyway, often in your thoughts, steering you toward the future.

A few years ago, a refrain planted itself firmly in my mind – it’s all yours God – and it’s never really gone away. It likely started out almost 20 years ago with Stephen Curtis Chapman’s song, Yours, but at that point, I don’t know that I deeply believed it. Chapman just left me pondering that very big thought. Over the years it persisted, it’s all God’s. He made it. He owns it. He died for it to buy back what was lost. He can do with it what he wants. As I began to deeply see the truth of that, and not just see it but love it too, it changed me. Those words of Paul, “You are not your own (1 Cor. 6:19),” suddenly meant more.

Inside me, I think two big things began to happen: 1) I gave up trying to control things so hard because most of them weren’t mine to control. It was freeing to let God do his good work without fighting him. 2) I began to grieve God’s own journey throughout time. Now I know that sounds strange, but knowing that it’s all his leads to grief and repentance when you look around you (and within) at the penchant of the human heart to ignore and write God out of the story.

So, I tried to put it in a song…of course.

SONG:

You can paint me like a sunrise that steals away the night, in a
Beautiful redemption, moving toward the light
You can paint me like an eagle, so high above the land, or a
Common little sparrow trusting in the painter’s hand.

The artist in me tries to make the brush and canvas mine, but the
Truth is they belong to the hands that authored time, so to the
Painter and the carpenter and the sculptor of all days
I’m learning what I really want to say: it’s your world, your way
This is your world; your way.

Amy L. Clemens, Your World, Your Way, 5.1.22

PRAYER: Oh God, when I contemplate that it’s all yours and the grief you must feel as you endure reckless human stewardship and rebellion, I feel grief for you. It’s even more amazing that you continue to offer grace and mercy to mankind at all – that you continue to rain on the just and unjust. Yours are the hands that authored time, and I’m so glad I learned to trust them!