What Does It Mean to Be Fully Available?
"The glory of God is man fully alive." — Saint Irenaeus
Becoming all that God created you to be is surprisingly simple. We love to complicate things in today's world, but our God is a God of simplicity. He doesn't want you to be confused, and He doesn't want you to be anything less than all He created you to be. Our God loves us deeply and wants each of us to live according to our God-given purpose, maximize our potential, and impact the world in our own unique way.
But how do I know my purpose? What's the best way to live to my full potential when there are so many options and competing priorities? How could I possibly impact the world in a way that nobody else could?
The answer to all of these questions is the same:
All that God wants from us is to make ourselves Fully Available to Him.
What's my purpose? To be Fully Available to God, so He can use me in unimaginable ways. How do I reach my full potential? I make myself Fully Available to God, and He multiplies my efforts in unimaginable ways. How do I impact the world in my own unique way? I make myself Fully Available to God, place my unique talents and abilities in His hands, and let His power work in and through me.
Surrender Is Not Passive
Chances are you've heard, in some form or fashion, that making yourself available to God is a good and noble way to live. When we pray The Our Father, we say, "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done." Among Christians, there's a general sense that surrendering our will to God's will is the right way to live.
I'm not here to dispute that. Who am I to say the prayer Jesus taught us is wrong or somehow incomplete? I wholeheartedly believe surrendering our own will to our heavenly Father's is the right way to live. I don't, however, believe that surrendering to God's will is a passive act, or for the faint of heart. God's will for your life is not for you to be mediocre, boring, or ordinary. God has dreams for your life that are unimaginable. Each of us has the ability to change the world around us in a way that no other human being who has ever lived, or ever will live, could dream of. That's God's will for your life.
To pray the words of The Our Father is a call to action. When I say "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done," I'm telling God I wish for His will to be done — and God's will for your life is that you impact the world in a way no one else ever could, that you live to your full potential and according to the purpose He designed for you. We take these words for granted. We mumble them without thinking, and when we do think about them, we assume surrendering to God's will means God does all the work and our part is passive.
It isn't. Surrendering to the will of God is absolutely necessary to maximize your potential, live your purpose, and impact the world — but it does require you to work very hard. Any loving parent doesn't spoon-feed their child everything throughout life; a child raised that way grows up sheltered and struggles under the weight of the real world. God, the most loving parent of all, is not going to spoon-feed us either. He wants to challenge us, change us, and see us grow into the masterpiece He created us to be. He has an unimaginable dream for our lives, but He recognizes that anything great requires hard work. Surrendering to the will of God is incredible, and it's essential. It's a call to action. It's a commitment to becoming Fully Available to Him.
Control What You Can Control
"Control what you can control" is a concept widely understood and very seldom put into practice — but not for the reasons you might think. When I ask people what comes to mind when they hear that phrase, most say something like "not worrying about what's out of my control." That's a natural response in a world so concerned with what everyone else is doing, but it's not the response I get excited about. The more appropriate way to implement this concept is: doing everything in my power to do the best job possible.
Too often we're worried about what other people are going to do for us. We blame others for not having the job we want. We blame our spouse for not having the marriage we've always wanted. We blame anyone and everyone for our problems, when all we should be focused on is controlling what we can control.
Being Fully Available is all about controlling what you can control. God has an incredible dream for your life. He wants to work in and through you so you can impact the world in your own unique way. But here's the thing: we cannot control when, where, why, or how God will work in and through us. That's completely up to Him, and there's not a thing we can do about it. That's something we need to accept.
Our focus should be on how much we allow God to work in and through us when He decides the time and place are right. That's something we can control.
God, being the loving Father He is, has given us the incredible gift of freedom. With that freedom, He gives us the choice to cooperate with His ways, or not. Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these" (John 14:12). If we believe in and cooperate with the works of God, we will do great things. That's not merely a possibility. That's a promise.
How much will you allow God's power to work in and through you? The level at which you allow that is the level of your availability to Him. The measure of your life is not determined by worldly wealth, power, pleasure, or honor. The measure of your life is determined by how Fully Available you are to God.
