Why We Need to Start with Start with Surrender
As believers, we hand over every dream and hope of our lives and every remnant of control we think we have to God. We surrender everything we have and all that we are to Him. We tell Him that He has all of it and ask Him to do anything He wants to do with us. However, we don’t always start our journey with Christ with this surrender.
We imagine that God has some difficult assignments for us. We’ve told ourselves that He is all about our submission and obedience. As a result, we relate to God based on how much we're ticking off what we believe to be His divine to-do list.
So, how well we do determines how close or distant we feel to God.
We feel so much shame when we think we’ve let Him down that we let go of God altogether. The problem with this is that we’ve attributed our fallible human traits to Him.
However, the Bible constantly shows that God will rescue you no matter how much you’ve messed up. Jesus wouldn’t have had to die for our sins if we were perfect.
God loves us and will come for us under all circumstances. And so, the fact that we all primarily relate to God based on our behavior is unbiblical. Even in Genesis, everybody's a disaster in one way or another. And yet, God restores them. He doesn't just restore them into relationship; He makes them His ambassadors on earth.
Even those of us filled with the Holy Spirit fall and mess up. And so, we get stuck. We either pull away from God or perform to stay close to Him. This is the dance I believe we do with God anyway, but it's especially the dance we do when it comes to purpose.
We think we need to impress or appease God in some way and try to relate to Him the same way we did to our parents, which is an inaccurate view of Him. As we begin this process of looking at how God has made us, let's start with the right view of Him. This starts with knowing that God does not need you. You are not fulfilling some crazy purpose that won’t be fulfilled without your input.
You are not primarily a tool to God; He doesn't view you that way. You are His kid. And so, His love for you and His grace over your life are unconditional. God provided the means to rescue us when we completely mess up.
There isn’t a single sin that can’t be cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
You can perform, try to do something awesome for God, and try to make a difference in the world so that He’s proud of you. But it's not going to change anything with God. So, let's start our journey from the posture of being a child of God. Let's crawl up on His lap and ask Him what He wants to do and how we can help.
You’ll be in absolute shock when you discover God’s plans for your life and the assignments that He has in store for you. God will give you a nudge when there’s an assignment that He wants you to fulfil. You might get a nudge to talk to a stranger at the grocery store, and all of a sudden you become a part of their story. There are stories of God’s plans for all the people you come across, and he invites us to participate as His kids.
Because we view God as disappointed in us or proud of us, we never sit on His lap. We never ask what He wants us to do each day because we genuinely think He's mad at us. When you think your dad's mad at you, you distance yourself from him. So, we need to start by changing our whole view of God before we surrender.
Ultimately, God is after us surrendering everything to Him.
God is not disappointed in you.
He doesn't need you to perform. All He wants for you is a relationship and trust in Him. He wants you to come back to Him. He sent the greatest love message ever written, and it costs Jesus His life.
God’s story is a great love story. Even when we have the wrong perceptions about Him, God still moves and works. As I get to know more about God, I find Him to be more trustworthy and delightful than I imagined before.
But underneath all our gifts, purposes, and the threads of our life that God designed, we must begin with surrender.
First, we say: “God, I don't want what I want. I want what You want.” And many times, the road God calls us on is not the one we’re comfortable with or one we think we’re perfectly suited for.
Ultimately, He loves to make us take risks. If you haven't risked anything in a long time, you probably need to ask Him what risk He wants you to take. God loves for us to take risks because we crawl up on His lap and trust Him when we're scared.
We ask for His help when we don't know how to do this thing that He has called us to do. We ask Him to lift us, and God loves that. I would say it's His primary goal for your life. So, pray and ask God what risk He wants you to take. And I bet you, He’ll give you more than one. That risk might feel small to other people, but to you, it will feel huge. And whatever it is, I want you to jump.
I pray that you would take small risks until your risk capacity grows. And then eventually, you'll be doing things you never could have imagined.
John 12:24-25
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
We must shift from our self-centered desires. This shift changes everything about our lives. If you've never surrendered to Jesus, this is the time. Lift your hands and say, “God, I give you everything. I give you all of me.” It has to begin with surrender, a love for Jesus, and being all-in for the life He’s called you to.
I've got a new dream in my heart that scares the living daylights out of me. One of the reasons I continue to be sure that God wants me to do it is how scared I feel and how much I need him. Every time I think about it, I get butterflies. And so, I ask God if this is really what He wants me to do next.
My dream for you is that you take one small risk.
Find just one place where you need God. Even if you’re scared, take that step towards what you've known that God wants you to do. We take a step and then watch God show up and move. It's the most fun way to live. If you've never experienced that or haven't felt it in years, He wants you to experience adventuring with Him like that again.
