Own Me
by Ginny Owens
Got a stack of books,
So I could learn how to live;
Many are left half-read,
Covered by the cobwebs on my shelf.
And I got a list of laws,
Growing longer everyday;
And if I keep pluggin' away,
Maybe one day I'll perfect myself
Oh, but all of my labor,
Seems to be in vain;
And all of my laws,
Just cause me more pain;
So I fall before You,
In all of my shame;
Ready and willing to be changed...
Own me
Take all that I am,
And heal me
With the blood of the Lamb.
Mold me
With Your gracious hand;
Break me till I'm only Yours-
Own me
Oh, You call me Daughter [Son],
And You take my blame;
And You run to meet me,
When I cry out Your name,
So I fall before You,
In all of my shame.
Lord, I am willing to be changed
Own me
Take all that I am,
And heal me
With the blood of the Lamb.
Mold me
By Your gracious hand;
Break me till I'm only Yours-
Own me
Own Me
What does it mean for God to truly own us? It may be as Ginny Owens sings, a blind contemporary Christian singer . . . We try hard, we buy all our books, we set up our plans . . . but at the end of the day, what God desires of us - what He's really wanting - is that we would lay down our lives. Ginny sings, "I fall before You in all of my shame. Ready and willing to be changed. Lord, own me, take all that I am and heal me, with the blood of the Lamb. Mold me by your gracious hand . . . break me till I'm only Yours - Own me."
How do we come to this place in our hearts?
Where our lives are laid down and where God can truly have his way with us?
Where God owns us and by His grace, begins the process of promoting and producing sweet, humble, God-glorifying, Christ-exalting worship in and through our lives?
I think it’s a kind of "hurt me so good Lord" cathartic reality where by His hand, He delivers suffering to help us die so He then might live vibrantly in and through us. When He comes in this way, it means first experiencing the painful (but healing) reality of owning up to our selfish, prideful and man-centered plans. Yet afterwards, His presence and peace is like a warm soothing sun after several hard, punishing but refreshing rains. We were squirming, wiggling and wanting to "do" or "act" to control our lives, but after, we are content to rest in Him and His loving arms and be satisfied in the glorious love of His majestic Son.
It may sound odd, when you don’t live here but in many ways,
Please don't misunderstand. On one hand, it’s incredibly exciting to see 12-15 children (ages 3 to 11) gather around 3-4 times in a day to see some crazy, funny puppets dancing to music in the middle of huge Italian park and then have them all cozy up around to hear a story about God’s amazing grace as demonstrated in a parable about a boy and a boat or another about a shepherd and his sheep…all ending in the story of God’s love as demonstrated on the cross.
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talk to an Italian young man like Bruno, who, for the first time, gets to hear the message of the gospel of grace. It’s a joy to see their eyes (old and young) as they begin to relate to what is being expressed through a mime or skit performed in the piazza by one of the student groups (first, a North Carolina high school group of 28 kids and then a group of Corbin College students most recently). “Tanti problemi” they say, due to the recent “crisi (crisis). And it’s especially encouraging when you suggest that you can get together and talk more about God and how Jesus has a plan for their lives and they actually offer, “Si, io penso che sabado pomeriggio e buono (Yes, I think Saturday afternoon is good).”
Or have ESL students, who love to learn English, show up at an “outside” activity to bowl, then to a concert by the N.C. high school students on a Saturday night (when they could be doing anything else), and then, all by themselves show up at church! One young man, Davide, 22, who did this offers, “Anche, prossimo domenica (Also, next Sunday!). We quietly think, “Thank you God…thank you for the challenges, the trials, the pain we’ve experienced. Because each one of these makes it all worthwhile.”
Living in Italy is not like vacation
Not to focus on our pain here (because we don't really even know true suffering) but suffice it to say, we can see why many Italians are so lonely, sad and feeling a sense of purposelessness. Life is hard here! 6 days of work usually (from 8 to 12pm and then back to work from 4pm to 8pm, Monday − Saturday). Little money also − 50% of their roughly $2,500 on average salary goes to the government for taxes − and that’s the ones with good jobs. Children go to school six days a week also...they don't even get a weekend as a family together!
As well, unlike
Then, on top of any of the external circumstances you may be experiencing (no job, losing the house, daughter is rebelling, etc), you also have the problem of selfish, prideful and sinful hearts. So when the difficult times come, responding in ways that reflect we are “owned” by God does not come easy. So, the question remains…especially in the light of the awareness of our miserable condition apart from God’s grace…what does it take to be owned by Him?
When some treat you like you’re stupid if you can’t express yourself in the language, you try to remember…humility comes before honor. When the Italian teachers yell and cuss at your children (cuz it’s just what they do here), you try to remember… brokenness can bring worship. When stuff breaks down (fridge, alternator, etc) and it takes weeks or months to get fixed, you try to remember…challenging trials from the hands of God are meant to purify us from our own ideas, strategies, aspirations (about how we think things should go) so we might be truly owned by Him. Truly available to do whatever it is He wants of us. Genuinely available at His command, at a moment’s notice, to do His will, share His truth, display His love…and all in a way that leaves self behind.
Thank you for your prayers...your financial gifts...for your love...making it possible for us to serve in a land that for the most part (99%) does not nor have they ever heard the true gospel of grace. A gift freely given to us so that we might turn and freely give.
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The following is a devotional on the subject of brokenness as the way toward worship which Lee just finished … hope you enjoy.
A life with a limp
I'm reminded of a powerful illustration of one man, Jacob, who likewise had to be broken in order to be owned. He had his own thoughts and plans and schemes which God changed in the middle of one dark night along with his entire identity through a radically humbling experience (ever wrestled with the angel of the Lord before?). Jacob's desire and request was worship (“I will not let you go unless you bless me”). The answer was brokenness (the Lord put his hip out of joint) and with it, a new name (“Israel” – one who strives with God), a new life (only the kind of life one can have after seeing God face to face) and a new mission…living and seeking to glorify for God with a limp.
A covenant given
It’s important to understand that the covenant of God that had been given to Abraham and thereby, to his son, Isaac and furthermore, to Isaac’s son, Jacob. The promise of offspring, numbering as many as the sands of sea and the stars of the sky, was to pass through their loins. Unknowingly to his grandfather, his father and now to Jacob was the fact that the Messiah Himself would one day be the most precious of Heirs and the fulfillment to God's amazing covenant promise to His people.
Abraham’s sin
Abraham and Isaac attempted to salvage the plan through human means on several occasions when the odds were not looking good for God's promise to turn out well. Abraham started things off by choosing to not trust God to bless him through his wife, Sarah, and instead sleep with his Egyptian servant, Hagar, to facilitate God's promise. The result: A great and mighty multitude, a sort of warrior race or generation to follow that would be forever set against God's people by way of his first, “donkey of a man” son, Ishmael (ever wonder all the wars and battles with Israel began?).
Like father, like son
Many Christians don’t realize that twice the promise was put in jeopardy and could have had disastrous results (adultery) when King Abimelech nearly had each of their wives for himself, years apart…first when Abraham lied saying Sarah was his sister to supposedly protect her. And then years later when Isaac did the same exact thing with his wife Rebekah (“She is my sister”). Isn’t it like us, when the promise of God and our "fruit bearing" possibilities are put in jeopardy, to move toward man-centered, man-exalting approaches, even to the point of lying to salvage “God’s plan”?
Jacob, the supplanter
Now it was Jacob’s turn. But Jacob chose very early on to live life according to his thoughts, his rules, his plans. Conspiring with his mother, Rebekah, to deceive his brother, Esau, to get the blessing from his father Issac (intended for the eldest), resulted in years of sibling rivalry, self-striving, unfulfilled promises, and fear.
Fear filled his heart. Wise or not, Jacob sought to appease Esau (by bribing him with 200 female goats, 20 male goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 milking camels and calves, 40 cows, 10 bulls, 20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys...whew, talk about smoothing things over!). Knowing that Esau was bringing up 400 men up to greet him, he sought to minimize his losses by splitting his camp into two...thinking if Esau attacks one, the other will survive. But God was up to something much grander, much more glorious...much more important than saving Jacob's possessions….
Owning Jacob – God strives
Once the “deceiver” or the “supplanter” (Jacob)…now, his name was “Striver with God” (
God's kind of worship means brokenness
I have to confess...this is something I struggle with...I want to be in control...even of my Christianity. I want God to tell me what to do and then I want to do it. If I need God's help or things start to unravel, I'll check back in. Otherwise, thanks God. I'm off to do your will.
When it became apparent that things were changing for us -- that God was leading us in a new direction, away from the ministry we were devoted to for 17 years, away from the United States, away from the friends and loved ones that have been our very life and joy, away from the sweet and kind and gracious fellowship and wonderful teaching of our church, and away from everything that has been comfortable and easy in sunny, warm, fun (touristy) Florida -- it was not something that I embraced right away.
In fact, God had to break me of my ideas and thoughts about how our future would go. God was trying to show me something new, something grander, something beyond my reach...but my Christianity had trained me well (or not so well). I knew the books, the theology, the formulas, the planning strategies, how to develop a vision, mission and values...but God had to break me of these. He had to break me of my pride (well, He's been doing this my entire Christian walk!). And God's way is usually to lay me low. Does He work that way with you?
Usually, we don't willfully choose humility. Our flesh is such that we often have to be forced by the providence of God to submit our wills...and maybe over the course of many years, first suffering and then sacrificing, hurting and then experiencing healing, being rent (torn) and then being restored...before we genuinely learn the sweetness of offering up our lives willingly.
But if you asked me what is it that brings us to this place of brokenness or what helps facilitate the process in a more direct route, I would tell you that I believe it is a glorious view of God and His Gospel, His love, His holiness, His mercy, His faithfulness, His wisdom and truth, His grace...that leads us in a direction of “being owned.” We must go down to go up or we must see Him lifted up in our hearts and our minds before we can fathom how we have not laid our lives down.
More books, more rules, more effort is not the answer. More mercy, more grace is. I strongly believe that is why Paul says, “It is the lovingkindness of God that leads us to repentance” (Rom 2:4).
D. Martyn Lloyd Jones writes,
“Let us keep our eye on this fact − you will find that the effect, always, of a revival is to humble people and to convict them, to cast them into an agony of soul, to make them wonder whether they had ever been Christians at all. Then suddenly from the very depths, they are lifted up to the highest heights, and the joy and the rejoicing correspond to the former sense of desolation and unworthiness and condemnation.”
Why is this? I believe it is because they have seen a glorious view of God, His gospel, His love, His holiness, His mercy, His faithfulness, His truth and wisdom that have this effect of laying us low so that we might be raised up high with him. Being owned requires a low posture.
Even reflecting on the famous verses from Isaiah 6 (verses 1 – 8), we see how pain brings greater ministry. Do you see how Isaiah had to first get a grand vision of God before he could see how infinitesimally small he was? And then, he was completely undone. In fact, he could do nothing or go no further without divine intervention. Like Jacob, he could not leave without the blessing of pain. A burning coal had to be touched to his mouth and only then, was he fit to do the ministry of God. It was only then that he could respond with a full (and contrite) heart to the question of being sent in the name of the Lord ("Here I am Lord. Send me.") He had been purified by brokenness. The hot, burning coal on his lips had seared his sense of his own worthiness.
You can also see in the end of Chapter 11 of Romans, how Paul writes about God's glory and expects that this glory will humble us so that we will then be willing to truly worship and serve God with an all out passion ("Living Sacrifce"):
First we read...
“Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?
Or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid?
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To HIM be glory forever. AMEN.”
Then the words that follow ("therefore...) Romans 12:1 [the Lee Walti translation] states,
"I deeply beg you, therefore, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, by the sweet and priceless mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice...dead to sin and to all self-serving desires but passionately and vibrantly and joyfully alive to God, to the Spirit of God, to the Gospel of Christ, to the truth of this Word, to all the things of God...which is what is pleasing and holy in God's eyes and which is also how you most perfectly worship Him."
The glory of God in all His grandeur brings the deep realization of our poverty apart from Him. Only as we see how great He is do we see how desperate we are. And then, and only then, will we willingly offer our lives as a living sacrifice at His disposal…even when it means a lot of pain, a good deal of discomfort and maybe even suffering.
I'll close with a beautiful set of verses from 2nd Corinthians that my daughter Bethany, read the other day that talk about brokenness. Though it’s hard, it’s necessary. Because through brokenness comes healing. Through pain comes joy. Through ashes, comes beauty. Through humility comes being owned.
2 Cor 4:7-18
"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;
9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;
10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, "I believed, and so I spoke," we also believe, and so we also speak,
14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence.
15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.
17 For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."
ESV
2 comments:
...and, this is why I can't wait to visit you guys...
thank lee for the reminder or not just who I am but Who God is..... MD
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