Fast Fridays: Surrender
I’ve taken a few weeks off of Fast Fridays due to travel and some crazy Fridays, but it’s good to be back in a routine and settling back into writing.
Brad and I had one of those really hard but good conversations yesterday. We shed tears over a plate of wings and it wasn’t the hot sauce. We’re thankful for recent growth, healing, and joy in our lives and marriage, but part of seeing where you are is recognizing where you’ve been. I’m so thankful for deliverance from some of those dark places we’ve walked, but I know they have shaped and molded our walk and our relationship.
The contentment and closeness we’re experiencing wouldn’t be nearly as deep without the brokenness and the trials. When you’ve walked through the dessert, the mountain tops behold so much more beauty.
The word that kept coming back to me yesterday was surrender.
The Lord has taught me trust and dependance so many times through different uncertainties and life experiences. And honestly, I thought I had checked it off in my personal spiritual growth check-list. I mean, if I hadn’t conquered trusting the Lord with my life through a quad pregnancy, what would it take? However, God is teaching me the difference between trusting and surrender.
Trusting is knowing God’s plan is for the best. Trust is belief and confidence. Trust is essential for surrender.
Surrendering is putting myself aside completely. Surrender is willingly laying down all of my own efforts and ambitions at the foot of the cross.
Surrender is a hands up posture of submission. Surrender comes after lots of messes and failures. Surrender is ongoing and active, a constant letting go. Surrender comes through the hard.
I’m not there fully, but I’m learning the sweetness of surrender.
As I’m heading home from worship practice, Isaac starts singing this great song. And there was that word again. Surrender.
May I surrender to His design and may these Hallelujahs be multiplied.
