Make no mistake about it: God has the power to change our lives in ways we cannot imagine. But we have to clear His way by getting out of it.

The choice we make is a bigger one than we might realize. It's not simply deciding we want Him to clean up a particular area of our lives or fix a specific problem. It's a choice to give Him total control.

TOTAL. Control.

Total control means He decides where to start. He may not start with the sin we wanted Him to help us change, or with the struggle we wanted Him to help us overcome. He has the power to do much more in our lives than we could ever think to ask Him, and He isn't willing to settle for our best. He wants to give us HIS best. And He's not much for negotiating.

The question isn't if He can change our lives, but if we believe His best is better than ours.

When I was a kid, my mom, bless her, was always willing to give me an explanation. She never liked to use "because I said so" to end a debate.

Raising three of me, I don't have that option. I just don't have the time to explain myself every time.

Being a Christian doesn't entitle us to understanding or explanations from God for every circumstance. On the contrary, being a Christian means we should be willing to follow and trust Him, simply because He said so.

Confidence has always come easy for me. Humility, not so much. Trying to learn how to mix both has felt like mixing oil and water.

But if I make a list of everything I've done well without God, and another of list of everything God can't do without me, the lists are amazingly similar.

I've treated humility as if it were ignoring my gifts. But that's not humility, that's just ungrateful. Humility should go hand in hand with confidence, as long as your confidence is in the One who gave the blessing, rather than the one who received it.

And it should also come with the confidence that He gave it for a reason and will be faithful to use it the way He intended.