Giving in

Raymond Moody once said the most powerful prayer was that of surrender. It is so very true - for surrender is the beginning of all change. Surrender isn't about what we can accomplish any longer, it is about what the one we surrender to will accomplish on our behalf. Surrender opens the floodgates of opportunity - to all those things we could never do on our own. True surrender is probably one of the most difficult places to arrive at in our hearts - for it means we let go and we give over what little control we were still holding onto. There is the type of surrender done under duress, but God isn't looking for this type. There is the type where we resign ourselves to the fact something will be a certain way, but God isn't even looking for that. What he is looking for is the abandonment of control - the willingness to relinquish it in order to allow other potential to be released - the potential that originates in God himself.

Since we respect our fathers here on earth, though they punish us, should we not all the more cheerfully submit to God’s training so that we can begin really to live? (Hebrews 12:9 TLB)

There is something powerful in submitting - despite the negative connotation that word musters in some hearts. The process of submission is not so much a stance of "giving up" but one of "becoming". It is the freedom to embrace new ideas, see things from a new perspective, and it opens us to new potential. Until we abandon the old, we cannot embrace the new - there is not room for both. Recently my BFF "downsized" her living situation, moving from a three bedroom condo into a much smaller two bedroom apartment. While the move was good, it required some "abandoning" of the old - some things no longer "fit". It made me realize there are times we take a whole lot of stuff from our past into what God has prepared for us in the present, not being very willing to part with them at first. As time goes on, we realize they just don't "fit" any longer. There isn't space for the old within the new. At that point, we can stubbornly hold onto everything, or we can let go of what God's been tugging at for a while anyway.

To begin to really live, one must surrender. It may seem like we are "giving up", but in truth, we are not giving up, we are giving in. When we go all in with God, he is free to go all out for us! Just sayin!

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