Don't Settle

Below is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, July 7, 2013.  The Bible verses used are Jeremiah 18:1-10.

Today we're getting back into our Hymn Hysteria sermon series with a look at the hymn we just sang, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.”  It got to the Elite Eight of our bracket contest, defeating “Shall We Gather at the River”, “Hymn of Promise”, and “Stand Up for Jesus.”

The words to this hymn were written by Adelaide A. Pollard in 1902.  Adelaide A. Pollard was actually born as Sarah Addison Pollard, and was born in Bloomfield, Iowa.  She did not care for the name Sarah, and eventually adopted the name of Adelaide.  She was a very humble woman—there are no pictures of her that I could find, and she often would not even put her name on the hymns or poems she wrote.  She attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and eventually went to New York, where she trained to be a missionary.

She wanted to do mission work in Africa, but did not have the money to get there.  She was at a prayer service one evening and heard an elderly woman say, "It really doesn't matter what you do with us, Lord, just have your own way with our lives.”  That reminded her of Jeremiah 18:6, where God says, “Can I not do with you, house of Israel, as this potter does?  Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.”  She is said to have written over a hundred other hymns, but this is the only one that really became famous, and it remains prominent until this day.

The tune was added in 1907 by George C. Stebbins, who also had a connection to the Moody Institute and was a well-known Christian musician and song-writer in his day.  Mr. Stebbins also wrote the tune to “Take Time to Be Holy”, which of course is also in our hymnal.

In looking at why we like “Have Thine Own Way, Lord”, it's interesting to look at the passage that Ms. Pollard based her poem on.  In that reading, God, speaking through Jeremiah, says, “I will have my own way.  I am the potter.  You are just clay in my hands.  What I say goes.  When I say a nation or kingdom is going to be destroyed, then it will be destroyed unless it does something to make me change my mind.  And when I say a nation or kingdom is going to be built, up, then it is going to be built up unless it does something to make me change my mind.  Things happen the way I say they happen, and that's it.”

The passage from Jeremiah is a statement from God, a warning about God's power.  That's power God just has, because God is God.  God does not ask for permission to use that power.  God does not care whether we mere human beings like it if God uses that power.  God is not interested in our opinion as to how God uses God's power.  The way God comes across in Jeremiah is that God will use God's power in whatever way God thinks it should be used, and so the kingdoms and nations had better be careful.  If those kingdoms and nations get on God's bad side, God will use God's power in a way that may be fair and just, but it's a way that the kingdoms and nations won't like very much.

That's not what the hymn says, though.  The hymn invites God to have God's way.  It asks God to have God's way.  It wants God to use God's power.  And it does not talk about nations or kingdoms.  It talks about individuals.  It says “I am the clay.  Mold me.  Make me.  I'll just humbly and quietly wait for you to do whatever you want to do.  You have the power.  Use it however you want to.”  The hymn begs God to take control of our lives, to fill us so full of the Holy Spirit that everyone can see Jesus Christ living in us.

And I think that's why the hymn is so popular.  We know that's what we're supposed to do.  We know that's how we're supposed to feel.  The song tells us the way Christians are supposed to be.  We're supposed to give up our own wants and desires and be totally submissive to God and God's will.

We read that in other places in the Bible, of course.  The prime example of it is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, knowing that he's about to be arrest and tortured and killed, not wanting to go through that any more than anyone else would, but knowing that it's God will that he go through it, and so saying to the Father, “Not my will, but your will be done.”  It's what we pray every week in the Lord's Prayer:  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  We know this is the attitude were supposed to have, where we put our own will aside and simply go where God wants us to go and do what God wants us to do.

If only it was that simple.  Well, that's not really the right way to put it.  It is that simple.  It's just not easy.  It's not that it's a hard thing to understand.  It's that it's a hard thing for us to actually do.

Think about it.  What would it mean for your life, or for my life, if God molded us and made us after God's will?  What would happen if we simply waited, yielded and still, for God to do with us whatever God wanted to do?  What would we be doing right now if God held absolute control, “absolute sway” as the song puts it, over my life or your life?  What would it be like if we were so full of the Holy Spirit that everyone could see Jesus Christ, only and always, living in us?

These are not just rhetorical questions.  They're questions we need to ask ourselves.  When we sing this song, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord”, we need to ask ourselves if we really mean it.  Do we really want God to have God's way with our lives?  Or is it just a nice thought, something that sounds good, but something we're not going to really do anything about?

It's an important question.  The reason it's so important is that when we pray this with honest and sincere hearts, God will answer it.  When we come to God openly, honestly, emptied of all of our selfish wants and desires to the extent that's possible, and truly ask God to take control of our lives, God will do just that.

And from there, we never know what might happen.  For Adelaide Pollard, it led her, not to Africa where she wanted to go, but to Scotland, where she did missionary work after World War I.  It led a lawyer in Wessington Springs to become a United Methodist pastor in the Wheatland Parish.  That's not to say that I always open myself up to God that way, because a lot of times I don't.  The one time I did, though, God took me in a direction I never thought I would go.

And that's the thing.  We don't have to do this perfectly.  We don't have to do this all the time.  That's the goal, of course.  That's what we're trying to do.  But even if we don't, even if we just do it once in a while—in fact, even if we just do it once—God will use that one time to completely change our lives.

Adelaide Potter wrote these words when she was going through what she termed a “distress of soul”.  And sometimes, that's what it takes for us to really give God control of our lives.  When things are going well, or even when things are not going exceptionally well but just kind of okay, we tend to not want to make any changes.  We don't want to rock the boat, or upset the apple cart, or whatever other cliché you want to use.  Sometimes it takes being miserable, feeling depressed, feeling that “distress of soul” Adelaide Pollard felt, before we're really willing to turn our lives over to God.

That's understandable.  I'm sure God understands it, too.  But it's sad.  It's sad because it shows a lack of trust in God.  It shows that we don't have enough faith in God to believe we could have something better, to believe that God wants us to have something better, that God wants us to be something better.

It's not sad because we're hurting God.  It's sad because we're hurting ourselves.  When we don't give control of our lives to God, we don't become everything God wants us to become.  We settle for “okay”, for “good enough”, for “could be worse”, rather than having the full, satisfying lives God wants us to have.

After all, we say God loves us, right?  We believe that, don't we?  If God loves us, then God must want what's best for us, right?  So, if we give God control of our lives, then it only makes sense that God will lead us to what's best for us, to what will make us the people God wants us to be, the people God created us to be.  That's an awesome thing to think about.


We don't have to settle for less.  The only reason we settle for less is because that's the choice we are making.  The only reason we settle for less is because we don't trust God enough to give control of our lives to God.  So let's not settle any more.  Let's come to God openly and honestly.  Let's empty ourselves of all of our selfish wants and desires.  Instead, let's ask God to have God's way with us.  We may not know what will happen when we do.  But if we trust God, we know it'll be something incredible.