DO I REALLY HAVE TO?

If you find yourself negotiating, “Lord, You can have it all, except this one thing?” you are not alone. Quite the contrary, so many brave sisters have approached me, one by one, in strictest confidence, trembling and asking the question they dread the answer to, the one question they can’t shake:

“Do I really have to?”

The specifics involved vary; for some it’s a relationship, for others a job or a stance they fear to take. Their common ground is that this issue compromises their conscience, and much as they try, it won’t go away. It’s almost okay. It’s not that big a deal.

By the time they come to me, they feel sandwiched between two fears:

One one hand: what if I really do have to let this go, this, my most precious idol? It would be unbearable, an amputation of pieces of my soul… Or what if God takes it from me by force?

On the other hand: what if the conviction grows dull? What if I resist the voice of God long enough that He gives up on me?

Both are real risks.

I’ve been there, too.

In my early walk, it was everything: my friends, my dance, my country, even my cat! Because I always felt like I was experiencing life, and especially worship, through a glass wall, frustrated in prayer one day, I asked Him why. That kind of exasperated prayer where you’re not really expecting a reply as much as just the relief of letting it out.

But the answer was unshakable:

“Your life is like a hand that is so full of your own choices that there is very little room for Me. To the degree you make room for Me, to that degree you will feel alive.”

Each needed to be a voluntary offering. I needed to feel the impact of choice, of willingly bringing each Isaac to the altar (Genesis 22:1-18). Each offering hurt appropriately, like the cutting of a covenant that is much more bloody than it sounds (Genesis 15:9-17).

I remember feeling so alone, naked, and dismembered before Him — a barren soul in a howling wilderness.

But just long enough to feel that vast space my losses left behind, space for God and space for His new blessings. In that order.

Etched upon my soul was the awareness that any blessing taking first place will become a liability and increasingly cancerous the longer I allow it.

As years passed, I became so comfortable telling of these early, intense sacrifices that their impact grew distant. Caught up in the frenzy of young motherhood while pioneering a church with a husband working two jobs beside the ministry (a rehearsed list of our too-much-life was ever ready to roll off my tongue), I grew spiritually dull.

Exhaustion can do that to you.

And loneliness is never far away.

Enter temptation.

At first it seemed like a God-given friendship, reviving dead places inside me, including my buried dance. But with it awakened other aspects of my old life, and I began to pull towards living as the single, untethered woman of my past. I found myself begging others to babysit my little ones so I could escape my responsibilities and live an illusion of freedom.

Innocent times on the surface. Isn’t this kind of self-care young moms are supposed to do? This wasn’t the lesbian relationship kind of my past, so what was the problem?

In reality, there were many warning signs:

1. A nagging sense that it wasn’t right. I wouldn’t find myself arguing with God if we were in agreement, right?

2. A loss of interest in my God-given, primary responsibilities.

3. A rising protest from my husband, my mentor, and closest friends. “Take a good look at your children,” my mentor sternly warned me, “They are the ones paying the price for this!” “It’s been a long time since I heard Jesus come out of your mouth,” another friend cautioned me.

4. A dulling relationship with God, realized late because He was no longer my first priority.

This time the surrender wasn’t voluntary. God put an abrupt end to it and just like that, snapped me back from worshipping the created to worshipping the Creator:

“because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man… Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness,… who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”

Romans 1:21-25 NKJV

This was my Ishmael (Genesis 16): taking something good, like a friendship, out of its assigned boundaries to satisfy in the flesh what can only be given by the Spirit. The discipline was mercifully strict: All contact to my friend (who, by the way, did nothing wrong here. I was the one responsible for the imbalance) was severed for seven years.

Just like during my first round of pruning, the presence and healing of God flooded into the open wound, and I realized afresh just how awe-inspiring and humbling it is to be embraced by forgiveness by the Holy One. Please, never let me leave this place.

“For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.” (Psalm 36:9 BSB)

One young sister sincerely grappling with it, describes:

“Just like the men who made idols out of wood and would use half the log to warm themselves and make bread and the other half they’d fashion into an idol and worship it, so too I cut out half of the sexual immorality—the fornication and the masturbation, but I have left the other half as my idol and have clung to it instead of to God. I am feeding on ashes—on my conception of sexual morality rather than God’s. I am once again leaning on my own understanding and not acknowledging Him for Him to light my path. I am not some exception, some special case. I have to follow the rules just like everyone else. Did I even ask Him what he thought about what I was doing or where we decided to draw our sexual line in this relationship? I don’t think I did. I thought I was doing enough, and for a time God was gracious to meet me where I was. But now He is doing a new thing, a deeper thing, a purer thing. And I must submit to it.”

The squeeze between a rock and a hard place is familiar to man, even to the Son of Man. Right after His baptism where His Father’s affection gushed out through an opened heaven, “saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (Matthew 3:17 NKJV) He was led into severe suffering where every human strength was surrendered.

That’s when His identity was questioned twice, evoking old humiliations from His childhood where everyone knew Joseph wasn’t His daddy, by the slithering innuendo, “If You really are the Son of God…” (Matthew 4:3,6).

It was intended to kick Him below the belt. It was intended to destabilize the already wobbly Man before the Tempter then offered Him the whole world without the Cross (Matthew 4:9).No need to go to extremes. It doesn’t have to be so hard. Did God really say….?

Back to my private conversations with souls distressed by the pressures of costly convictions: Do they really have to?

No, they don’t. We all have free will.

But the consequences of refusing the promptings of the Holy Spirit are incalculable. How do you measure erosion of integrity or calluses of the spirit? In the word of Jesus, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand” (Mark 3:24-25). And a soul internally divided fragments until it crumbles. No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).

It’s not that we shouldn’t. It’s that we can’t, any more than we can simultaneously ride two horses galloping in opposite directions. Even if their pace is a slow trot, the result is the same.

To make it jarringly clear, Jesus shows us the inevitable result:

“Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven (Matthew 10:32-33 NKJV).

If something is throbbing inside you right now, take a deep, slow breath, exhale, and repeat till your heart rate is calm. Then honestly assess if there is

1. A nagging sense that it isn’t right? A sense of arguing with God?

2. A loss of interest in your God-given, primary responsibilities?

3. A rising protest from people you know to have your best intent at heart?

4. A dulling relationship with God?

If so, sister, you’re in good company. The path of the Cross is costly, but it is the only way to resurrection. When Jesus had definitively resisted His temptations, angels came and ministered to Him (Matthew 4:11). And they strengthened Him to take the next step and the next.

And He Himself has strengthened me though every single loss and surrender. More than that, fifteen years after the Ishmael friendship, He entrusted me an Isaac, a friend who draws me closer to God, to my family, and to my responsibilities, and who has become an integral part of it who is embraced by all.

A heavenly gift from God, held in the open hands of adoration to the Giver.

You will have your own reward, here and later. Facing the fear and intimidation of loss, it’s human to ask if your sacrifice will be worth it, and Jesus welcomes your question, as He did with Peter:

“Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

(Matthew 19:27-30 NIV)

“Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;

instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;

therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;

they shall have everlasting joy.”

(Isaiah 61:7 ESV)

Make this your story, my sojourner, and then join me in testifying why Jesus is worth it.