My daughter Lindsey loves apples. She loves playing with them, eating them, hoarding them, stealing them, making a mess with them…you name it. (Of course, this is pretty much how she treats everything, but that’s another story.) One time, when she was 18 months old, she asked for an apple for a snack. I got out my handy-dandy apple slicer, where you press the thing down on top of the apple and it cores it and chops it into slices, all at the same time, and sliced the apple for her.
She was not content, however, to take one measly slice, or even to wait for me to put the slices into a bowl. Instead, she had to grab all the apple slices and walk away—probably to leave them on the floor somewhere, or maybe to actually eat them.
But fresh-cut apple slices are slippery, and when you’re only 18 months old and you’re trying to hold eight slices in your two little hands, well, it’s tough to do. So as she headed across the kitchen, most of the slices slipped out of her hands and landed on the floor.
I headed toward her to pick up the slices, intending to throw them away and slice her another apple. But Lindsey saw me coming, bent down, scooped up the slices in both hands, and started toddling away as fast as she could go.
I caught up with her, and when she felt my hand touch her, she sat down on the floor and began to cry, clutching those apples in her two little fists like they were the Hope Diamond and I was trying to steal it. “No! No!” she screamed tearfully as I pried them from her grip. Then, when she finally gave in to the realization that she had lost, she stopped saying “No!” and just wailed.
“I’ll get you some more apples,” I had tried to say as I took the apples away from her. “These are dirty. I’ll get you some more.”
But she didn’t want more apples. She wanted the ones she already had. The ones that fell on the floor and were dirty now. The ones fit only for the trash can. Those were her precious apples, and I was taking them from her.
Friends, have you ever tried to hang onto dirty apples?
Oh, I don’t mean actual food that has fallen on the floor. I mean things that God is trying to take away from you, telling you that they’re no good. When he wants to remove something from you, do you let him, or do you scream and cry and clutch your dirty apples with all of your might? When he finally, mercifully, removes them from you by force, do you wail, heartbroken?
I think we have all been there. But oh, dear friends, we don’t have to be there ever again.
Lindsey was too young to understand that I was taking the apples away for her own good, intending to replace them with something far better. Or if she did understand, the pain of losing the apples she already had was too great for her, and she clung to what she already had hold of, even though they were dirty. Even though they were trash.
There is a Rich Mullins song with a line that goes, “I’d rather fight you for something I don’t really want than to take what you give that I need.”
That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
God never asks us to give things up, or removes things from us, just to cause us grief with no other good purpose in mind. We know for certain, because we know his character and because he has revealed this in the Bible, that everything he does to and for us is for our good and his ultimate glory (which are one and the same).
So why, when he asks us to turn loose of something, do we fight him? Maybe it’s because we forget his character. Lindsey thought I was being mean to her. Sometimes, we question God’s goodness. Other times, our emotions are so intensely involved that we simply can’t bear to part with the thing in question, and any attempt to make us part with it sets off such intense grief that we just can’t consider anything else.
There’s another way we could respond when we’re asked or required to give up something we hold dear. It’s easy to say “Okay, God” when we understand and agree with the reason for giving it up. Right now, I’m talking about when we don’t understand, or we understand but don’t agree. During those times, we can make a decision of our will to voluntarily give up to God that which he is requiring of us. This doesn’t mean saying we desire to give it up. Quite the contrary, sometimes. What it does mean is that we can tell God, “God, I know that you wouldn’t ask me to give this up if there weren’t a sufficient reason. Although everything within me wants to fight you on this, I choose to follow not my flesh, not my limited understanding, but that which I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is true—that you are good, all the time, and that if you require something from me, that is good enough reason, even if I don’t understand why. So I choose to give this up to you so that you don’t have to pry it from my hand. I do this even though it grieves me…even though it tears my heart in two…even though if you gave me the choice, I would scream, ‘No! Don’t take it!’”
Hard? Oh, yes. Friend, I’ve been there. I know it can be agonizingly hard. But I also know it’s worth it to surrender willingly.
You see, God will take what he needs to take, whatever our response may be. So will we fight him? Or will we let go?
Will we hold onto the dirty apples? Or will we trade them in for something better, that even if we can’t see and don’t understand right now, we know it’s coming? Because you can be assured that God will bring good out of even the greatest tragedy. That’s the kind of wonderful God we have.
Isaiah 55:9—For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Romans 8:28—And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.