Yield

When writing first started to become an important part of my life, a friend gave me a book of 300 writing prompts. This summer, I have been trying to use one each week as a writing exercise. Last week’s prompt was,

“What street sign does your life most closely resemble right now?”

It’s a strange question, but one I could quickly answer. The street sign that most characterizes my life right now is the yellow, diamond-shaped sign that bears just one word: Yield.

During the summertime, my schedule is more flexible, and I have more time to read, pray, and just be still. Last year, God used that extra time of study and prayer to teach me a variety of things that all seemed to revolve around the concept of abiding in Christ. This year, I have woken each morning with a burden to use my time the way God wants me to. If last summer’s theme word was abide, this summer’s word is shaping up to be yield.

But, you might be asking, yield to what? And what is it you’re yielding? The answer to the first question is easy: I am learning to yield to God. And what is it I am learning to yield? Simply everything. As Romans 6:13 commands us,

“Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and you members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

To say that we, as Christians, are to yield everything to God may seem overly simplistic or perhaps too basic to be helpful, but it is a lesson God has been teaching me for years now—a lesson I am very much still learning day by day.

I am learning it in the small obediences of setting my alarm each night so I can have enough time to pray and read the Bible in the early morning quiet before my mind and heart are distracted by the cares of the world or the buzzing of my phone—and then actually getting up when the alarm goes off.

I am learning it in the daily task of washing dishes and choosing what to eat. I am learning it in the keeping of a schedule, even on my “at home” days—and in not keeping too tight a hold on that schedule when God has other plans for my time.

I am learning it in the moment-by-moment living of life, in the constant decision-making and whispered prayers of “Yes, Lord” when the Holy Spirit changes my course or prompts me to (or not do) something in accordance with His will.

I am learning it in the delight and joy of seeing just a bit of God’s plan for me come to fruition, blossoming out into something I could never have imagined.

Just last Sunday, I got into my car after the morning service and was just about to back my car out of its parking lot and head home, when a car passing on the street caught my attention. I watched it, with the sense that somehow, God wanted me to wait for the person to come into the parking lot. I put my car back in park thinking it would just be for a moment and watched as the car slowly turned around on the street and headed back up towards the stoplight.

As it passed me, I had the distinct impression that God wanted me to talk to the man in the car. This is crazy, I thought, he’s driving right past me. How could God expect me to talk to him while he’s actually driving away? Instantly, God’s words to Philip in Acts 8 sprang to mind: “Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.”

Still not quite believing what the Holy Spirit was telling me to do, I slowly backed up and started to drive towards the parking lot exit, keeping an eye on the car God had pointed out to me.  To my surprise, the man had parked on the side of the street and was walking towards our youth group’s strawberry booth (which was closed, since it was Sunday.)

I circled around and rolled down my window, asking the man if I could help him. As much as I would love to tell you that I shared the gospel with the man, and he got saved and led all his family to the Lord, that wasn’t God’s plan for that particular moment. It turned out that the man only wanted the church’s phone number, so I gave him a church tract (which did at least have the gospel on it).

Mundane as the interaction seemed, I drove away with a deep sense of joy at having heard and obeyed (eventually…) the Holy Spirit. That is what yielding bring us.

When I spend time with God each morning, one of the first things I pray is a prayer of yielding. I yield myself to God’s protection, wisdom, sovereignty, and empowering, as well as His view of my sin. I admit that I need God’s help with all that is before me that day, and I take time to get my heart in tune with the heart of God. There’s much more I pray about, but the act of yielding myself and my day to God helps me to keep that prayer of “Yes, Lord” in my heart throughout the day.

But I’m no spiritual giant: sometimes I find it incredibly difficult to yield things to God, and other times I forget to in the rush and hurry of a life that my pride is all too ready to claim as “my own.” But no matter how much I like to control things, no matter how I might argue that it’s my life and I can do what I want, I am a Christian, and the truth remains that my life is not my own.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says this very thing:

“What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

I am not my own: my life is a gift from God, to be lived for Him and in trusting obedience to His will. When I struggle to yield to God, it is usually because I have not made the choice to trust Him with the situation or people to which I am so tightly clinging. I am stuck on the “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” part of Jesus’ prayer, forgetting that peace only comes with the next phrase: “nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:39)

Trusting obedience, the yielding of my rights, plans, feelings, or ideas to the will of God, is the only way to true joy. To the yielded, obedient child of God, to live for the Savior is a privilege, to serve Him a delight.

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”

Romans 6:16