Leaving things behind

Corrie Tem Boom once said, "Hold everything loosely, because it hurts when God pries your fingers open."
When God calls you to a task, there are things that must be left behind. The inability or unwillingness to do that keeps us from receiving His best for us. Some call that His permissive will. I am not convinced that a permissive will really exists. I think it is more likely our rebellious version of what He really called to do.
The older I get, the more rebellion I see that still needs to go. Why is absolute surrender so difficult? Part of it I think is cultural. We have performance and drivenness and no one exceeds Americans in competitiveness. That unfortunately is not God's mindset, but the enemies. As long as we compete, we are at odds one with another.
Let's skip through the Bible and see who God called and what they had to leave behind:
Beginning in Gen 12 we see God calling Abraham. "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.'" (Gen. 12:1)
God told Abram to leave his father's house, bid farewell to his relatives, leave his country, and move to a country to which God would lead him. To man's way of thinking, what God asked Abram to do was extremely difficult, but God had plans to greatly bless him.
Through out the Old Testament men and women were called to leave what was familiar and follow God. You didn't have to be royalty or notable. Rahab, the prostitute, left everything familiar and became part of the lineage of our Lord.
In the New Testament, Jesus continues to call people out. He calls Matthew, the tax collector, the fishermen, the woman at the well, the beggar. After Jesus' death, Saul is called out.
The call has never stopped.
And in a way that only God could perfect, when we lay down those things so precious to us, we find true freedom and a peace not known before when we clutched those things. When we open our hands, we no longer struggle. We surrender to His will. There we find peace and the fullness of His perfect will.
I so encourage you to read and meditate on Ephesians 3. Ask the Holy Spirit how to reach that exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. He says it is "according to the power that worketh in us..."
What is He calling you to leave behind to follow Him?