You might know the old hymn that begins, “Give of your best to the Master, none else is worthy his love.”
It’s a wonderful reminder, and an important one. God deserves the very best we can give him. But if you think about it, God not only wants our best – he also asks us to give him our worst.
In First Peter 5, verse 7, we are told, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you,”
Jesus knows that we are not always at our “best.” Even after we’ve been Christians for many years, we still have worries and concerns. We still make mistakes. We still sin. Even as we sing a song like “Give of your best to the Master,” sometime we end up giving him our worst.
We can all identify with the apostle Paul’s words in the seventh chapter of Romans:
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” Rom 7:18-25
We all want to give God our best, but often end up giving him our worst.
And that’s just the point. God knows our sins and failures and problems, and he has forgiven them all in Jesus Christ. He wants us to know that he loves us and that he cares for us.
Jesus tells us, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,” (Matthew 11:28).
Give God your worries -- you don't need them. Give God your anxiety. Give him your fear, your anger, your hatred and bitterness and disappointment, even your sins. We don't need to carry the burden of those things, and God doesn't want us to keep them. We need to give them to God because he wants to take them from us, and he's the only one who can dispose of them properly.
Give God all your bad habits. Give him all your resentment, all your immoral thoughts, all your addictive behaviors. Give him all your sin and all your guilt.
Why? Because he has already paid for it. It belongs to him, and besides, it’s not good for us to keep it.
So we need to pry our fingers off of all our worst and give it all to God. Give God all your guilt, all the negative things he doesn't want us to have to carry. He loves you, and he wants to take it off your hands. Let him have it all.
You’ll be glad you did.
I’m Joseph Tkach, speaking of life.
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Copyright 2007 Grace Communion International