Stephen spoke on Sunday evening about pies, likening our lives to a pie. Some of us prefer savoury pies (steak pie, mince and onion pies etc.) and others prefer sweet pies (apple pies being perhaps the most popular.) Whatever our preference, one of the things about pies is that they can be divided up and shared between different people.
We often use the idea of a ‘pie chart’ to think about the different aspects of our lives (how much time we spend sleeping, working, with friends, going to church and so on.) Such an idea can be a good checklist for our priorities, and Stephen challenged us not to think of God as simply a part, portion or segment of our lives but to give Him all that we are and have – in effect, to give Him the whole pie! Gen 12:1-3 gives us a glimpse of what this looks like in a person’s life as we see God calling Abram and Abram obeying whole-heartedly, going wherever God called, giving Him full control of his life.
We might wonder how we will survive life if we give God everything: won’t we lose out on our pie?! In fact, the opposite is true. Gen 22:18 reminds us that God promised to bless all nations on earth because of Abram’s willingness to give Him control. What Abram received back was blessing – blessings far more than he could have ever anticipated, blessings that were more numerous than the grains of sand on the beach. (Gen 32:2) If we let God have the full pie of our life, we too will know blessings greater than we could ever expect by holding on to the pie. It’s God’s law that when we let go and yield or surrender to Him, we actually find we receive more than we could get by holding on to life. Jer 29:11-13 reminds us both of God’s good plans and intentions for our lives and the need to seek Him with all our hearts.
So often, we are selfish and greedy when it comes to literal pies, wanting more than others, wanting to satisfy our hunger and appetite. We can act in similar ways with God, trying to look after ourselves and being reluctant to give to Him. The truth is we don’t need the safety net of our solutions and actions; we don’t need to ‘sort life’ ourselves. It’s not really about sharing our pie with God, giving him a tiny portion of our lives, but about giving Him the whole pie and finding that we are then blessed beyond all measure.
