Hold Lightly What You Value Greatly
Ray Pritchard
Keep Believing Ministries

Excerpt: "Let me draw one simple application from all this and I will be done. I can state it this way. Hold lightly what you value greatly because it isn't yours anyway. In one of his books Watchman Nee said that we approach God like little children with open hands, begging for gifts. Because he is a good God, he fills our hands with good things — life, health, friends, money, success, recognition, challenge, marriage, children, a nice home, a good job, all the things that we count at Thanksgiving when we count our blessings. And so like children, we rejoice in what we have received and run around comparing what we have with each other. When our hands are finally full, God says, “My child, I long to have fellowship with you. Reach out your hand and take my hand. But we can’t do it because our hands are full. “God, we can’t,” we cry. “Put those things aside and take my hand,” he replied. “No, we can’t. It’s too hard to put them down.” “But I am the one who gave them to you in the first place.” “O God, what you have asked for is too hard. Please don’t ask us to put these things aside.” And God answers quietly, “You must.”

I learned this truth the hard way twenty years ago. It happened in another time and another place when I thought I was on top of the world. Everything looked so good to me. One day a friend dropped by to see me. “Do you have a few minutes to talk, Pastor Ray?” “Of course,” I replied, “Come in.” After a few minutes of conversation, she came to her point. “Pastor Ray, you have to let go. You’re holding on too tightly.”

How a Good Thing Becomes an Idol

It was one of those moments where from the first word of that sentence I knew exactly what she was going to say. And I knew she was right. Deep in my heart, I had known it for a long time but didn’t want to face the truth. I was holding on to something so tightly that it had become an idol to me, something dearer than life itself. Before you ask, let me say simply that the thing was not evil or bad. In fact, it was a good thing that had become an idol that I dared not give up (an idol is anything good that becomes too important in your life).

One year passed and things in my little world began to fall apart. Through a long string of circumstances I found myself facing a tragedy. Looking back I can see clearly that God was prying my fingers off that “thing” one by one. But when he got down to the thumb, I fought back. I didn’t want to give it up. But God is stronger than any man and eventually he pulled my thumb off. As the wise man said, your arms are too short to box with God. I gave my idol back to him, but when I gave it back, I saw clearly that it was no pagan idol, but something good that had become too important in my life. In the end God took back that which had always belonged to him in the first place. "

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