One of the most profound discoveries I have made in my journey as a Christian man and father is the amazing grace that comes when I submit to God. I think that this is also one of the most difficult things to do, at least from my experience. I was raised to be independent, to get what I want out of life I would have to get it myself. This makes it especially difficult to subdue my own will and allow God to bring about His own will in my life. Another facet that makes this extremely difficult is the uncertainty principle behind this. Most of the time I don’t know what God’s will is for me in my life, and not knowing what that is makes it difficult to submit to His will.

However when I am able to put my own selfish desires, my own will aside and let God remain in control, I have found that amazing things happen.

One of the first hurdles I have had to overcome is the realization that no matter how hard I try or what I do, I am NOT in control of my life. One of the worst things that we learn in the secular world is that we can control our lives(or at least we think we can). About a month ago our pastor did a sermon, and for some reason I cannot remember what the sermon was about, or what all was said; however one thing he said stuck in my mind to this day. Paraphrasing what he said: “We don’t have any control over how we are born, we don’t have control over how we are going to die, and we really don’t have control over anything in between. Without this realization we are just grasping at straws all of our lives.” When you think about it, any other viewpoint on life in general is just denial of the obvious. On any given day I could leave my house and be killed instantly in a car accident, or I may die in my own home. I have absolutely no control over any of those circumstances. There is one person who does…God.

Now I know this is easier said than done, as I am speaking from experience. I struggle with this every single day. I do know that the more often I submit to His will the easier it gets each successive time.

I’ll give an of one of my experiences in submission:

Before I worked for the company I’m at now (AGP), I worked for a pretty decent plastics manufacturing company (PW Eagle, now JM Eagle). I had made a mistake at work and my supervisor essentially told me that I may as well look for a new job. Being the sole provider for my family this placed a great stress on me as I was now out of work and needing to find another job immediately or my family would suffer. Naturally I immediately began a frantic job search, and took a couple temp jobs to suffice until I found a permanent job. After a few days of frantic job searching and no real concrete possibilities, I got down on my knees. At that point I had nothing else to lose as I was already at my wits end, and needed help fast. I asked God for His help, and finally submitted to whatever His will would bring. The next day I had two interviews scheduled and went to each one with a small prayer, “God, if it is Your will for me to get this job, then I will praise you, and if it’s not Your will then I will praise you, because only you know the plans you have for my life.” Remembering Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

The stress that this took off of me is indescribable. I felt like there was hope again. God answered my prayers that day, when I received a call about 10 minutes after coming home from my second interview of the day, with a job offer. The job was the one we were praying for. I thought the blessing was just that, however I found out about a month later that my old job had layed-off 14 people from the plant that I had worked at, and many of my former co-workers were now out of work and looking for new jobs. Out of all of this I only missed 2 or 3 days worth of pay and ended up working for a better company, with better benefits, pay, and job security. God has a plan for each and every one of us, and His plan is 100 times better than any plan we could come up with on our own.