A couple of Sundays ago, Anthony Evans led worship at church and some things that he shared during worship are still lingering around in my heart. He talked about how the Lord had been chasing after him, and as a result, he had arrived at a place of total and complete surrender. His transparency and vulnerability that day moved me, but I wasn’t able to fully understand why, until later on. You see, during church that day, I rejoiced for him and I thanked God for bringing him to a place of total surrender, but I didn’t take it any further than that. What I mean by that is, I left church that day and I didn’t feel like I needed to apply anything he said to my own life, because in my heart, I felt like I was already in a place of total surrender. However, the Lord purposed to show me otherwise. And the the truth of the matter is, I didn’t have this surrendering thing down to a science like I thought.
Surrender….to yield to the power, control, or possession of another. To give up completely or agree to forgo. To abandon, or relinquish. Surrender.
I think sometimes we hear words over and over again and we become so familiar with them, that unknowingly we become desensitized. Clearly I know what the word surrender means, but as I pondered the above definition and then took it a step further and actually applied those words to specific areas of my life, surrender took on a whole different meaning.
To surrender means to yield to the power of the Lord. To give up completely our propensity to control certain situations in our lives or even our need to fully understand and/or question what He is doing behind the scenes. To surrender means to forgo complaining (This one is my downfall). To abandon reason and logic when they are attempting to block or hinder our faith. To relinquish worry, doubt, fear and even certain expectations that we have. Or as Anthony put it that day during church….to surrender means to stop running from the Lord. To give up our way of doing things. To take up our cross and follow Him…daily (Matthew 16:24).
Surrender.
I could go on and on about this topic because the Lord has shown me so much about it and He continues to open the eyes of my understanding and has shown me how having an un-surrendered heart can and will have a domino effect on so many different areas of our lives. But for the sake of sapce and time, I will stop here:)
So my question to you is, are you in a place of complete and total surrender to the Lord? Have you yielded, given up, forgone, abandoned and relinquished whatever that “thing” is in your life? Or are there a few areas of your life that you are still holding on to? Not ready to let go yet because you have had a tight grip on that “thing” for so long. What has the Lord taught you about surrender? Do you find that surrendering is easy or hard?
Can’t wait to hear from you all.
In Him,Antrenette
P.S This song is awesome! Linnae introduced me to this song. It is called, I Surrender by Kim Walker. Enjoy:) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSgn-nmBpNY
