Do you have something in your life that you are still waiting to be fulfilled?
While other little girls were dreaming of being Nurses and Teachers I was dreaming of being a mother. When I married, we tried for years for a child with no success.
There came a day when I had to surrender that desire to God. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I had to accept that I could not make it happen and instead had to trust in the Creator of life.
Is there something very dear to you that you need to hand over to God?
Is there something that you need to place in the hands of your loving Father and trust Him with it?
Surrender means that we lay down our agenda, our control and trust God, even when we don’t know what He will do.
When I think of surrender I think of God's covenant promise with Abraham (Genesis 15:4-5). And after waiting many years for that promise to be fulfilled God asks him to sacrifice the precious child that He had given him, (Genesis 22). How hard would that have been? I don’t know if I could have been as faithful as Abraham!
When we decide to give up control and decide to trust God we move from living in our own strength to living in His strength. When we surrender, we position ourselves in a place of humility and total obedience to God.
God is not nearly as focussed on our personal enjoyment and fulfilment as He is on developing our character. There is a real strength that is built into our character when we are able to release to Him those things that are so important to us. AS we do this we make the choice to focus on Him rather than ourselves. We focus on His will being done rather than our own.
Paul puts it so eloquently in Philippians 3:8 when he talks of his willingness to forgo all that was important for the will of Christ.
I had a lot more mountains to climb before I got to see the fulfilment of my dream. It certainly did not work out the way I thought and I learnt far more than I anticipated. But in the end, it worked out far better than I could have hoped or dreamed with the birth of healthy twin boys and four years later the birth of healthy twin girls.
I want to encourage you today to give to God the desires of your heart and trust Him with them. His timing is not always the same as ours and His outcome is not always the same as ours but we can be confident that He will be with us every step of the way.
Lord, There are things in my life that I have held onto and tried to do in my own strength. I am choosing today to place them at Your feet and trust You with them. I choose Your will over my own in my life. Amen
