Not my own

I can finally see
That you're right there beside me.
I am not my own,
For I have been made new.
Please don't let me go,
I desperately need you.

~ Meteor Shower, Owl City

Our culture is obsessed with being in control. It makes us feel safe to know that we're the ones behind the wheel, that we can decide what to do with ourselves. Not just with the the things we decide to believe and think, but what we do with ourselves too. Not many people (even Christians sometimes) would be willing to say "I am not my own". Its something that even I am still trying to understand. What do I have control of in my life? Do I even have the right to say "that is mine, I'll decide what to do with it"?

I can't say it better than Elisabeth Elliot. Her book Passion And Purity tells of how she dealt with her feelings for Jim Elliot and how she managed to wait for him for five years, all the while trusting God and giving everything up in His care. Its a book about a relationship, yes, but so much of it can be applied to almost any other area of life. Take what she said about being your own, for example. This is an excerpt from a conversation she had with Jim one night after he told her he loved her.

"If I marry, I know who it'll be. That is, of course, if she'll have me." He flashed his famous smile. I smiled in reply. He hastened to add, "But I'm not asking. I can't do that, Bett, and you'll have to understand that. I can't ask you to marry me, and I can't ask you to commit yourself to anything whatever. I can't even ask you to wait. I've given you and all my feelings for you to God. He'll have to work out whatever He wants."
Could He? My mind was full of questions. I thanked God for a man who put Him first. I could not have gotten terribly excited about one whose spiritual hunger did not parallel my own. . . .
"I'm hungry for you, Bett, "he had said. He was not one to beat about the bush. "We're alike in our desire for God. But we're different, too. I've got the body of a man, and you've got the body of a woman, and frankly, I want you. But you're not mine."
Not his. God's. That much was clear. But what was God going to do about all this? Was He interested in the plight of two college kids? Had our cause perhaps escaped His notice? Would He bother with us, when He was busy with who knew how many worlds?

Who had gauged the waters in the palm of his hand,
or with its span set limits to the heavens?
Who has held all the soil of earth in a bushel,
or weighed the mountains on a balance
and the hills on a pair of scales? . . .
Do you not know, have you not heard,
were you not told long ago,
have you not perceived ever since the world began,
that God sits throned on the vaulted roof of earth,
whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers? . . .
Life up your eyes to the heavens;
consider who created it all,
led out their host one by one
and called them all by their names;
through his great might, his might and power,
not one is missing.

Not a star, not a planet, not a meteorite or a quasar, no, not even a black hole or a black dwarf is missing. God made them. He knows their names, knows exactly where they belong. Can He keep track of us?

Why do you complain, O Jacob,
and you, Israel, why do you say,
"My plight is hidden from the Lord,
and my cause has passed out of God's notice"?
Do you not know, have you not heard?
The Lord, the everlasting God, creator of the wide world,
grows neither weary nor faint;
no man can fathom his understanding.
He gives vigor to the weary,
new strength to the exhausted.
Young men may grow weary and faint,
even in their prime they may stumble and fall;
but those who look to the Lord will win new strength,
they will grow wings like eagles;
they will run and not be weary,
they will march on and never grow faint."

Amen and Amen.

The Lord is my strength and my song. My shield and high wall. He will never be shaken, He can never be moved. He knows the plans He has for me; plans to prosper and not harm. He is my shepherd, I shall not want. He gives me strength when I am weary, and I will grow wings like eagles, and march on, and never grow faint. I am not my own, for I have been made new.