Hold Your Hand

The Beatles sing a song called, "I Want to Hold Your Hand." This is common knowledge to anyone who knows anything about The Beatles, but I'm looking at it from a different perspective today.

We are supposed to follow the Lord in all that we do. Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." We should let the Lord guide us and direct our path. Proverbs 3:6, "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight." So this is the bargain: Let God carry out the plans he has for you in your life, lean on him, and don't worry about a thing, and He will make your paths straight. Sounds like a pretty good bargain to me. And yet we resist. We don't want God to take control of everything in our lives. We insist on controlling something, if not everything. Or maybe we give him parts of everything, but there is always a small bit left and we hold onto that piece for dear life. There is something about giving everything over to an invisible and mysterious God that scares us, understandably. But shouldn't we know better? Shouldn't we understand, after having known God for a while, that He is crazy in love with us for no reason at all, and to even be able to give our lives to him is a gift in itself? Now to refer back to the song. Read the lyrics as if God is saying them to you.

"Oh, please, say to me

You´ll let me be your man

and please, say to me

You´ll let me hold your hand."

Now it seems silly to say that God wants to be our "man." But to substitute another word in for "man," God wants to be our commander. He wants to be our friend. He wants to be our leader. He wants to be our Father! God is reaching out his hand, giving us a sympathetic and loving gesture by wanting to lead us. Think about how you would feel if you were reaching out to grab your child's hand, but when they saw what you were doing they suddenly jerked away and told you that they didn't need you at all. It is a sad picture. God just wants to be a part of our lives! He wants to love us and demonstrate his love by leading us through the trials, the joys, the pains, and the sorrows of life. But when we see what he is trying to do, we pull away and say, "God, I don't need you. I can do this all by myself, just go away!" I imagine God would be hurt, and sad.

And we would be stupid to give up such a gift.