Surrender

Surrender is the topic of this post today and I would like to lead into what I would like to write with a little bit of personal history which I hope will, at least to some degree, illustrate this idea of surrender.  I write it simply because our wonderful director of youth ministries, Jason Holt, asked me after my first post to share a little bit more about something that happened in my life and it just happens to fall into this category of surrender which God has led me to write about today.  So, here we go.

(I'm not going to go into super specific detail but I trust you will get the proper idea of what I am saying.)

About five years ago I went through a period in my life that was most trying and difficult for myself, for as far back as I  can remember I have wanted nothing more than to live out God's will for my life and as early ninth grade I had aspirations of becoming a missionary on the foreign field.  I loved reading books and hearing stories about missionaries and wanted to be one of those who would take the Gospel into the jungle and hack through brush like Indiana Jones and build a house that the wind would blow through at night and send the candle light dancing and flickering across the walls.  I had this romantic sense of adventure, still do, and thought that's what God wanted me to do.  So much so that after I went to Bible School I went to MTI and studied missions and then spent a few months in Mexico on the foreign field observing and participating in the very thing I thought God was calling me to do with my life.  It was hear though as I spent hours in the room given to me by a wonderful Mexican family that God began to do something in me.  I didn't understand what it was at the time, but He was asking me to surrender to Him.

I came back from Mexico and spent the summer on Summer Teams traveling around sharing the Gospel.  It was during this time that I began a friendship that God used during the next months and years to bring much encouragement into my life, which suprised me greatly because as God was breaking me it was hard to see that God was still out for my good.  

Following Summer Teams I returned home to Cloquet, MN and spent a year working and trying to figure out what it was that God wanted me to do with my life.  I mentioned earlier that God began this process while I was in Mexico and it continued on through the next several months.  Of course we must always be surrendered to Christ, but this was the breaking point for me.  While living at home I applied to several colleges, each one at a different time, because God kept closing the door to each one that I thought that I ought to go to.  My plan was to study missions and head out onto the foreign field somewhere, even though I had come back from Mexico disillusioned and confused about what God wanted me to do.  Finally, it was May 2005, and I said, "Fine, Lord, you don't want me to be a missionary, then show me what to do."  This came though after the final blow to my stubborn pride and selfishness in not wanting to surrender to what God wanted me to do.  During my time at home I had been dating someone and really thought that we were going to get married, but it turns out that God had other plans.  We broke up in early 2005 and after that happened I went into a state of complete confusion and disarray.  I was angry, I was depressed, I was lonely, and I was lost.  The plans that I thought God had for me had all been completely taken away from me and now what was I going to do?  I felt like a failure.  God was saying no to missions, no to getting married, I had no plans; no hope.  I didn't read my Bible for two months because I thought God would tell me something only to discipline me once again.  As I said though, in May things changed.  God began to break through my stubborn heart and show me what He had been trying to do for so long.  You see, the plans I thought were His were really rooted in selfisness and a desire for adventure above anything else.  I didn't so much care to bring the Gospel to people, I wanted an adventure.  My relationship that got broken up, had been, on my part, very much used to satisfy my own needs and not the needs of the other.  God began to show me these things and it has been from that point on that God has taken my life and began to teach me and show me what it means to live a life completely surrendered to Him.  Yes, I have wanted to do God's will for a very long time but it has taken time and a surrendering of myself, my pride, selfishness, and desires to do what He wants me to do.  Surrender is key to following Christ.

I would like to close with verse, "Then Jesus told His disciples, 'If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me'"  Matthew 16:24

Are you willing to surrender?

Afterthought: it seems that my whole post was my testimony.  Maybe next week I will continue with this theme of surrender, for it is what we are all called to, and though I shared about God asking me to surrender my life plans to Him that surrender takes place in our hearts and is carried out day by day in all of the thoughts, actions, and words of life.