Surrender

Over the last few weeks I've been thinking about the word surrender and what it means.  The Oxford English dictionary defines it as; "hand over, give into another's power or control, giveoneself up"  This definition is all good and well,  but for me the word "surrender" needed to be looked at in context.  The contect I was putting it in was a Christian one.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this and what it means to surrender.  At first I wondered if it was yet another "Christian thing" to do or if it was another "Christian phrase" christains threw around but never really new what it really meant.  After I pushed these terrible thoughts out of my head, I started to think about what surrender meant to me.

In The Begining 

When I thought of surrender and surrending something to God, it meant giving it back to him and walking away from it.  I then thought that it as done and what ever it was it was finished never to be mine again.  For example,  God told me to surrened the promise he gave me of marriage to him and the person he told me it was going to be to him. In my head, I understood this to mean that God was taking it away from me and that  this promise no longer existed and it would not happen.

This thought about surrender would make me not want to surrender and I would hold onto control and not surrender to God.

I Started To Understand

A couple of months ago I praid and asked God how could I literally and practically surrender something to Him. answer was simple... "Piece by piece, daily you give it to me and I'll do the rest."

I started doing this. Every single day during my quiet time, I would say to God, "Today I give you control of this...." and eventually, somewhere during the process  I found that I had reached the point where I had surrendered it all to God.

My New Understanding

I know understand surrender as something you do when you give control to God. It's me saying, God I want you to this Your way.  I want to follow your path for my life, not mine.  It's giving Him control of an area of your life and saying I'm not going to maipulate the situation or control it to go my way.  I'm just going to trust you with the outcome.

I don't see surrender as giving something back to God and then thinking He's not going to do this and he's taken it away from me.  I see it as giving God control of the situation and trusting Him with it, knowing He will work the best and His purpose in the situation.

I've discovered that as you surrender, God is able to move in and work. He's able to do what He wants to do to accomplish HIs purpose.I've discovered that as He works, He creates something beautiful - way more beautiful that I could imagine or do by myself.

xKx