Be No More than God Has Made You

This decision to forget ourselves on purpose is a daily decision. Our adultish selves keep waking up every morning imagining they’re in charge, and every morning we have to remind them of their part in the grand scheme. Everything in our upbringing has taught us that living is about becoming more. Our habit is always seek to gain—more insight, skills, ideas. But Scriptures also talks about losing stuff: vines require pruning to become more fruitful, precious metal must be refined in fire to become pure. We like the idea of growing and shining bright but want to do so without the pain and loss of pruning shears and the furnace. If we want to become more Christlike, it feels like moving backward to become less . . . .

I began to wonder if, as God emptied Himself of equality with God, setting aside power, He actually became more human than we are. I began to wonder if my self-filling project, as satisfying as it might have seemed, had kept me so full there was little space for God. Seventeenth-century Quaker Isaac Pennington wrote this:

“Be no more than God has made you
Give over your own willing;
Give over your own running;
Give over your own desiring to know or be anything.
Sink down in the seed which God sows in the heart.
Let that grown in you;
be in you;
breathe in you;
act in you;
And you will find, by sweet experience, that the Lord
knows, loves, and owns that and will lead you to the
in heritance of life, which is God’s portion.”

I journaled: “What might it look like if, instead of working to build myself up, I devoted my energy to actively, consciously emptying myself, giving over my own willing, running, desiring? What if all along my efforts to be more have smothered the seed that God has sown in my heart? If I emptied, might it clear the way for that seed to grow, for God’s work to take root in my life?”

My morning prayers are now often devoted to this work of emptying. It is hard work, but simple. I begin every day with the same confessional about my habits—to look strong, to control, to understand. As I let each problem, each heartache rise to my consciousness, I confess the ways I have been working in my own strength. And the hardest, but best, prayer comes. To get over it. To say, “I confess the ways I’m trying to fill myself up. To be more than I am. To be You.”

This is not an effort to avoid action. I don’t say “I’m only human” as an excuse. These prayers put things in order: I am human. God is God. These prayers help me as the day unfolds, to watch where God is at work and how He calls me, small and human as I am, to respond.

It is excruciating to hand over everything I’ve been trying to accomplish, every way I’ve been protecting myself. It goes against my education, my socialization, everything the media has taught me—all my Amanda habits—and it brings me to a bare, open place. When I first visited the place, I was ashamed, ordinary, naked. But over time, the shame gave way to freedom. I became accustomed to the discomfort of my own humanity. Or perhaps I was distracted from the discomfort by the beauty of what I was discovered growing there. As I emptied, I cleared away all that had piled up on the seed God had sown in my heart.

I removed everything that blocks the light and thwarts the growth. Once I’ve set aside my own efforts (even my efforts to empty well), I come upon that open, quiet place that God knows, a place where I am only human and my need for God is plain. God is the seed God has planted in us. And when we empty ourselves of all efforts, God can grow in that soil.

from Mandy Smith's new book, UNFETTERED: Imagining a Childlike Faith beyond the Baggage of Western Culture.