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Have you ever found yourself working on a project and hear God calling you to leave it be. Or maybe you feel God is asking something of you and you just can't seem to give up the reigns of your life to Him? Our pride, our desires, our wants, our loves all cloud our view of God and we think that we know better or that there can be another way. We make excuses and continue on working, perhaps harder than we were before. It is in this mindset that the adage which says, "If you love something, set it free," teaches us to trust in God.
The most poignant example of the Prayer of Relinquishment is that of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is here that our Lord, broken and distraught, wrestles with God asking Him for another way to save humanity. It is not just once that Jesus goes to pray in the Garden, but three times! Blood and tears marked His prayers that night. However, He ends His solitary vigil with these words, "Yet not my will, but yours be done." Other leaders of our faith have learned the Prayer of Relinquishment as well: Abraham relinquished Isaac to be a sacrifice; Moses relinquished his understanding of how the deliverer of Israel should function; King David relinquished his first son born to Bathsheba.
This prayer may sound like it is calling us to let go and, in many ways, it is. However, we are not letting go to give in to a fatalistic view of our future. Instead, we put our faith in God and trust Him that the plans He has for us are greater than we can understand. Sometimes, in letting go, God is testing our faith to see if we are willing to give up something we hold dear. Many times, that very thing returns to us like Isaac returned to Abraham. Sometimes, however, we may never see it again and we must trust that God's ways are altogether right and good.
Let's face it, as medical students, it is hard not to want the best for our career. We say we are going to be the best surgeon, the best cardiologist, the best internist, the best physician and we are going to save thousands of people through our work. We think we have to get in the 93rd percentile or get so many honors in order to get into that competitive residency. In saying these things, we are putting faith in ourselves - not in God.
By putting to death the will, God is able to take this tiny vision of ours and free us from it in order to release the greater good that He has in store for us. The Prayer of Relinquishment is a crucifixion of the will that joins Paul in saying, "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." It frees us from the burden of always having to get our own way. Foster explains it in this way, "It means freedom to care for others, to genuinely put their needs first, to give joyfully and freely." This prayer daily will transform us, not like a flash of lightning violently illuminates the night sky, but over time like an oyster transforms a grain of sand into a precious pearl.
Catherine Marshall once wrote, "Resignation is barren of faith in the love of God...Resignation lies down quietly in the dust of a universe from which God seems to have fled, and the door of hope swings shut." Our relinquishment, as opposed to resignation, is an act of crucifixion of the will which releases us from our standards, our miniature vision, our faulty ideas and our imperfect actions. The Prayer of Relinquishment is not something that I can tell you how to pray. It is unique to your experience and unique to you. I can, however, tell you that in praying this, we must go with Jesus into the Garden and say, "God, it is not my will, but Yours that must be done." In doing so, we can fall with full satisfaction into His arms, knowing that His will will be done.
James 4:13-17
Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
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