[image error] I was eight years old when I responded to the appeal to give my heart to God.  I stumbled tentatively towards the front of the church…an area known as “the altar”. This is where all the people who wanted to give their lives to God were ushered. After repeating a prayer of confession, repentance and commitment, we would stand (or kneel) around the altar and pray…seeking strength, and to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

I stood there with hot, sincere tears stinging my cheeks, eyes closed and hands raised. There were other people in the area (altar workers) who prayed with us, exhorted us, and guided us. I distinctly remember one of the altar workers telling me in one ear, “hold on, brother, hold on", while in the other ear another altar worker was encouraging me, “let go, brother, let go”.

Forty-some odd years later, I have concluded that much of the progress in my spiritual walk has been a matter of understanding the dynamics of holding on and letting go. Moving towards (and in) my god-given purpose…the quality of my spiritual life…the nature of my spiritual walk…the depth of my experience with God…all these have largely hinged on holding on, and letting go.

The idea of holding on and letting go is a paradox. According to Webster’s dictionary a paradox is an unbalanced statement or a situation that seems logically impossible because it’s made up of contradictory terms…yet they somehow combine to be true.

Our journey to a place of spiritual fitness is marked by many paradoxes. For example, we seek a relationship with God that will last for an eternity—while in a body that has a clear expiration date.  The quality of our life is determined by the internal things we are willing to put to death .  The more we give away, the more we are promised to have.

I know, a lot of it doesn’t make sense, except in this context: faith.  Faith takes the intangible, invisible, impossible, immaterial theories of the universe, and factors them into our natural, sensory lives, resulting in introducing the chance to—in this life—see the invisible, feel the intangible, and experience the impossible.

The idea of walking by faith and not by sight is not just a leap into the dark – it’s a light into the dark. By nature, I tend to lean towards the pragmatic. But I’ve learned that when I come to the end of the road—to the end of myself—and still haven’t reached my destination, then the pathway forward will only appear based on my ability at that moment to hold on to my dreams and let go of my comfort zone. To hold on to my faith and let go of my fears. To hold on to my future and let go of my past.

To let go of what I have become, in order to grasp what I can become.
Carl Prude © 2013

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