"The Lord is my
portion," says my soul, "therefore I will wait for Him." The
Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good
to hope silently for the salvation of the Lord. - Lamentations 3:24-26
We all adopt survival
techniques from birth, which we carry with us into adulthood. Even though our
caretakers did their best in most cases, they were not always available to make
sure that we had what we needed at the time that we needed it. This caused us
to grow up relying on and protecting our self.
Therefore, we try, by the
sheer power of our will, to hold everything together. We think that we have to
handle our problems on our own. We search, often in vain, for any sense of
security in life. We use all of our might to hang on, to fix it, to change it,
to manage it or to try to make it right. God wants us to LET GO and to admit
that we are powerless and that we need His power in our life.
One reason that people are
reluctant to trust God is that they blame God for the bad things that happen in
life. This launches us into a lifestyle of controlling. Controlling life puts a
tremendous amount of stress on us. We suffer mentally, emotionally and
physically because we try to hold everything together. We carry the weight of
the world on our shoulders. We think that keeping our self and our loved ones
safe is up to us.
We forget that God created
paradise as His will for our lives. Actually, sin in our life and the lives of
everyone around us causes negative situations to occur. The key to remember is
that when we surrender to God, He always works everything out for our good,
even the negative things (Romans 8:28).
God knows everything from
the beginning to the end of our life. He sees the pitfalls and He knows the
joys, which He prepared for each of us. Only as we surrender our will to His
can we know the true riches of life on this earth (Romans 8: 28; Jeremiah
29:11). Admitting we are powerless and that we need Him is the first step
toward serenity and healing. Let God be God in your life.
God wants us to completely
surrender our will to His and to stand defenseless before Him. To surrender
means to cease resistance and to submit to
authority. That may sound like walking into bondage, but surrender is
actually the doorway to freedom. This is called “dying to self.” Pride will not
surrender. Self-righteousness will not surrender. Fear will not surrender. Only
those who are totally broken are ready to surrender and to live with total
dependence upon God. God does not take our free will away from us. He simply
asks us to surrender our will to His.
When we surrender to God, we
say, “Go ahead, Lord, and have Your way with me.” We allow Him to humble our
pride and to stop our reliance on our self as we put our life into His capable
hands. He will then restore us to the person He intends for us to be, free of
mental and emotional pain and guilt and equipped to serve Him in His chosen
ministry for us.
Trying to control our life
usually produces the OPPOSITE effect of what we want. Our dependency on
anything other than God - addictions, people, places, jobs, things, animals -
puts us into bondage to them. Only God’s love produces true freedom.
WHEN I AM WEAK, THEN I AM STRONG (2 Corinthians
12:10).
When we stop trying to control life and give our control over to God, we allow
Him to provide for and to protect us. His mighty power starts working in us and
through us. When we surrender our life to Him, He accomplishes infinitely more
in and through our life than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3: 20).
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, I want to get
off the throne of my life and relinquish control of my life to You. Life is chaotic when I am on
the throne. Life is peaceful and calm when You are on the throne, and only then
can I live and walk in true serenity.
Thought
for the Day:
Surrender each moment of your day to the Lord
and rejoice evermore.(Many thanks to Donny Roberston for his photo.)
