The Life of Surrender

I have hesitated to start this part of the “being the light” series because we have been not so good at it this summer/spring. The third part of this series is rest. I never really found this aspect important before because I always thought God wanted us to work for him instead of resting. God gave us a model in the Bible. He created the world in six days and the seventh he took to rest. I believe he wants us to work for six days with all our hearts and then rest on the seventh by worshiping him.

Sabbath Rest

I believe we should find one day a week to enter into a sabbath rest. We are finite human beings and we think that we can push our bodies and our minds to maximum capacity to keep up with the world. We think that we need all seven precious days of the week for progress and we are fooling ourselves. What we need to do is work wholeheartedly for the Lord six days and set apart the seventh to rest in Him, delight in Him, and fully acknowledge that we need Him!

Observing a Sabbath day of rest is putting the responsibility in the proper place. Everything that we have and everything that we are able to do is of God. When we don’t slow down and rest and bask in God’s glory and reset our minds from wordly views, we put all the responsibility on ourselves. We think that we are God and we can conquer anything. This is simply untrue! Apart from God we can do no good thing (John 15:5)!

“He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3:30

When we come to God knowing that He is all powerful and we are mere human beings, we are in the proper posture to truly worship Him.  Having a day set aside to fully delight in God and acknowledge our humanity is a great form of worship.

Our family’s Sabbath rest has looked like spending time together and worshiping God. We try to sing some hymns, read the Bible together, and pray together. We also do family activities for the majority of the day that we don’t always allow ourselves time to do during a busy week. We will do puzzles with the kids, play Legos, read a good book, or even take a nap! These are all luxuries that we won’t slow down to do during a busy week. In the summer, we have been finding a state park and going on hikes on Sunday afternoons. It is so refreshing to get out into the outdoors and spend time as a family enjoying God’s artwork together. I would highly recommend that you find a day (it doesn’t have to be Sunday) and spent a Sabbath as a family. It is a very refreshing way to worship God.

Resting in God

The other form of rest is resting in God’s promises. All too often we think that everything is up to us. It is very sinful to assume that we are in charge of our lives and we have the power to change them. God promises that he will never leave us for forsake us (Deuteronomy 3:16). When we rest in God and His promises, we can have peace in our lives knowing that our infiinitely powerful God is taking care of us and we are not in charge.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and  I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

 

Dependence

The last way of finding rest in God is depending on Him to take care of us. Observing the Sabbath is all about letting God know that we are not in control of our lives and we know that He is. We need to live our lives being dependent on God and not trying to gain control of our own life situations.

“If dependence on God is the objective, then our weakness becomes an advantage.” – J.D. Grear

I love that quote! Dependence on God is the goal and He can use our weakness to accomplish anything that He wants. I want to live my life with my hands open waiting for what God has for me instead of thinking I know what is best and trying to manipulate and control trying to get my own way. I want to REST in God and his promises for my life! I want to have a peaceful life trusting God to take care of me instead of a stressful life trying to get what I want for myself.

 

My prayer is that you will draw nearer to God by abiding, surrendering, and resting in Him. I pray that you will enter into a deep dependence on God and He will use you for His kingdom work!

 

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize, for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14

 

Press on towards the prize, friends!

The next part of being the light was about surrender. We had surrender as our word of the year for 2016 and it really helped us to think about how many different areas of our life we are holding on to. This was the part of my relationship with Jesus that I found really difficult. I had no problem surrendering some areas of my life but I really didn’t want to and still struggle to surrender all areas of my life. I really think surrendering is just telling Jesus that he is actually Lord of my life. He wants to be in charge of everything, not just what I decide is easy to let him have.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

I don’t think Jesus is calling us to an easy life. This is a struggle for me because I like easy. I like my comfort zone. I don’t like being challenged and forced to move out of my comfort zone. Jesus is calling me to trust him to step out of my comfort zone.

 

I have thought of two ways that we can put surrender into practice:

• Be Doers of the Word

We can spend a lot of time and energy in the abide part of our relationship with Jesus. It is important to read the Bible, pray, and worship God. We can see our faith grow through abiding in Him. Eventually though, our faith will plateau off and we will no longer feel as close to God as we did at the beginning of our Bible reading and praying. The reason is because we need to start taking action and doing what we are reading about. We need to follow God’s instructions that we are hearing in prayer time. When we sit back and never do, our relationship with God won’t grow.

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.  James 1:22-25

Matthew West has a song called “Do Something” that I think is the perfect example of surrendering. When God calls us to do something we need to submit to His will and just do it. We can talk ourselves out of doing a lot of God’s work when we sit around and wonder if God is telling us to. If what you are feeling you should do lines up with what the Bible is teaching, then you should absolutely do it!

One example of my life is that I like to get stuck in my routine. I will often get frustrated when people mess with my routine and I don’t always want to engage conversations or go out of my routine to do something new. I have felt God convicting me in the mornings to pray to Him and ask Him what he wants me to do with my day instead of how best I can follow my routine. I wonder how many parts of God’s plan I missed out on or people that needed encouragement that I passed by because I was so stuck on myself and my own routine. We should wake up in the morning yearning to help God with his Kingdom work!

Lastly with this part I don’t want anyone to think I am advocating that we earn Heaven by our good works. Jesus gave us our salvation with His work on the cross. There is nothing that we can do to earn it. Rather, our fruit is the evidence of our salvation, not the means by which we receive it.

• Allowing God’s Spirit to Work on Us

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.  John 14:26

 

God gave us the Holy Spirit after Jesus left the earth to hep us understand His Word, to convict us of sin, and to help us live life righteously. We shouldn’t be downcast when the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin. We should be happy that he is making us more like Jesus. We need to accept God’s discipline in our lives and we have to submit to His will. Neither one of these things is easy!

I love this verse out of John 15:1-5 talking about how God prunes us so that we can be more effective. It is not a pleasant process and doesn’t always feel good, but it is beneficial.

The Vine and the Branches
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:1-5

 

After we abide in God’s Word, pray, and worship; we must be doers of the Word. We must follow God’s will for our lives and look for ways that we can increase His Kingdom! We are not doing this to earn salvation, but to glorify our God and Father. We also need to allow the Spirit to convict us of sin and repent when He does.

God has big plans to use all of us if we will get up and do something!

I have spent a good chunk of my life wondering what it truly means to live for Jesus. Since little on I was watching people to see what that looked like in someone’s life.  In the last three years Peter and I have approached God a little differently and I think I have a little bit of a better grasp on what a Jesus filled life looks like. I am not perfect by any means nor do I feel like I have arrived at this higher platform of Christianity, I just feel that the things I have been doing in the last three years have brought me to a closer relationship with Jesus than the rest of my life.

We recently were able to go back and be chaplains at the camp we met at. This was the message that I shared that week. It started when I heard this interview from  David Platt and he shared three words about living for God. The three words were abide, surrender, and rest. I really felt drawn to those words because these are words that Peter and I have really been working on in our lives.

This blog post will focus on abiding and the next one will be surrender and the last one will be rest.

 

Abide

Definition: (of a feeling or a memory) continue without fading or being lost.
synonyms: continue, remain, survive, last, persist, stay, live on
“the memory of our parting will abide”

My definition of abiding means living with Christ and remembering him in our daily life. When I think of how to do that, I think of your common Sunday school answers: read the Bible, pray, worship, and go to church. Most of my life I had been doing those things, but not in a way that was fervent.

 

Reading the Bible

For the majority of my life, I have taken the Bible in using only bits and pieces. I would read the parts of the Bible that I needed to complete for a Bible study or devotions without reading the Bible through in its entirety. Peter and I felt convicted to read it through and we signed up for a one year plan. After reading God’s Word all the way through I realized how much of his character I was missing out on. I felt like I knew God more than when I was just taking bits and pieces of His Word.

Here are some downfalls to not reading The Bible all the way through:

• We skip chapters that are challenging
  • I never wanted to dive into Revelation or Judges because they intimidated me. The thing is, God gave us the entire Bible to reveal himself to us, not just the parts of the Bible I thought were pleasing to read.
• We put God in a box by only taking from passages that give us good feelings
  • We don’t always want to hear about God’s judgement and wrath. We want to hear about his grace and mercy but the Bible speaks on both and we need to hear both.
• God reveals himself and speaks to us while we are in His Word.
  • There have been so many times that I have been reading the Word and God has spoken to me through it. I have just felt like I knew the answer to a question that I was wondering about or I just felt a knowing that God wanted me to read this passage right at this time.
• See The Bible as one story instead of many random pieces
  • The entire Bible fits together. It is one big story and we need to look at it that way instead of a bunch of random pieces.

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ-Romans 10:17

 

I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 119:11

The Center for Bible Engagement did a study on people who read the Bible four or more times a week:

• 228% more likely to share their faith with others
• 407% more likely to memorize scripture
• 59% less likely to view pornography
• 30% less likely to struggle with loneliness

They also said that the lives of Christians who do not engage the Bible most days of the week are statistically the same as the lives of nonbelievers.  Back to the Bible Research Page

There is power in God’s Word and we need to engage it fully and consistently.

Prayer

This year is our year of prayer. We have been watching sermons and doing research on prayer. What I have found is that God wants us to be in prayer with Him. It is part of our act of surrender and giving our lives to God.

These quotes hit me between the eyes early on in the year:

To not pray is to silently declare that you have more power over your situation than Jesus does- Dad Tired Podcast

Prayerlessness is Pride- David Platt

Wow! When we go about our lives without inviting God in through prayer, we are telling Him that we want to be in charge. Consistent, humble prayer puts us in a position to be used by God instead of just asking God for our wants and needs.

In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. Psalm 5:3

I have used a prayer journal and have been loving it because it reminds me of all the things I want and need to pray for. I have also been using this form of prayer so that I come humbly before God instead of trying to use my own agenda.

Praise and Adoration

Repentance

Ask

Yield

(P): When we start our prayers with praise and adoration we tell God who He is and what He deserves. He deserves ultimate praise!

(R): Then we need to acknowledge our brokenness before Him and ask for forgiveness and restoration.

(A) Then we can ask our creator for help with family, friends, and problems in our own lives.

(Y) Lastly, we yield our lives to God and acknowledge that He ultimately is in charge and we want to follow His will.

When we set up prayer to exalt God instead of trying to receive our own interests, God works through us so much more abundantly than when we just put up selfish prayers.

Worship

The last point I wanted to talk about in abiding is worship. God is wonderful and deserves worship from us all day long! A form of worship that we have been doing is trying to cut things out of our lives that aren’t beneficial and adding things into our life that are. We have been trying to do less television and more Bible reading. We have been watching sermons instead of television series. Our family tries to do praise and worship time and reading The Bible at meals. I love to have hymns and praise and worship music going in our home throughout the day. God is deserving of our worship and we should find activities that help us meditate on Him all day long.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1

 

 

When we are serious about studying God’s word, pray to him unselfishly, and give him our worship and praise throughout the day, we are so much more in tune to God’s truths. We are less susceptible to the ways of the world because we are taking in more of God’s truths instead of what the world tells us is true.

 

I challenge you to get on a Bible reading plan and keep doing it over and over again. Let God’s word lead your life and then go before him humbly knowing that He is Lord of your life. You will be amazed at the ways he can use us to increase his kingdom!

“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” 

Galatians 5:25

I wrote down this verse at the end of December to meditate on in January. I have been thinking about what it means to live by the Spirit.  It sounds good, but what does it look like in everyday life?

I got an answer the other night as we were up in the night with kids and then we were having a hard time falling back asleep. I was having a hard time falling back asleep because I was worrying about how the sleep disturbance would effect me the next day. When I start to worry about these things, my mind goes into a tailspin of silly worries that don’t need to be worried about.

Exodus 16 tells the story of the Israelites being led in the desert by Moses. They started grumbling and complaining about not having enough food.  God provided enough manna for one day and told them not to take more than they needed for the day. Some of them disobeyed and took more and their manna was rotten in the morning.

Food is not something that I typically worry about. I hardly ever have to worry about if we are going to have enough food for the day. I know many people don’t have that luxury, but in our home it is not something that is a concern. My concerns recently have been centered around my energy level and getting enough rest and relaxation. I find myself grumbling just like the Israelites that I don’t have enough energy or time in my day to do the things I want to do.

As I laid in bed worrying about when I would be able to make up for this lost sleep, I felt like God was putting the story of the Israelites and the manna for the day in my head. I felt like he was telling me to stop worrying about my energy level for the next day and to enjoy what he had provided me for this day.

I felt like God was painting a picture for me what keeping in step with the Spirit means. I need to trust God for the energy I need for today, for this hour and minute.  He does not want me to be burdened down with worry about when I will be able to refuel.  When I trust God to fill me, I feel His presence more in my life than when I am leaning on myself.

I heard somewhere that you know something is an idol in your life by the way you think you would react when it is taken away.  By that definition, sleep and rest are a big idol in my life that need to be given to God and not manufactured by my own will.

I want to experience God’s full power in my life. God does not distance himself from us, it is the other way around. When I try to manipulate my life situations by gathering more “manna” than I need in the moment, I am distancing myself from my Creator.

We are not meant to live life with mountaintop highs all the time. We are really meant to live life in the valley where God shapes us and molds us and He can use us more when we are relying on Him instead of on ourselves.  I want to live my life leaning into my Creator and not trying to blaze my own trail thinking I, the created being, am above the Creator.

This is our third year picking one word as an anchor for our lives. Our 2016 word was surrender and you can read more about that here.  Discipleship was the word for 2017 and you can read about that here.   I am so thankful that God put these words on our hearts and we feel like it really does anchor our year. Last year when we started discipleship we had no idea where that would bring us.  God gave us so many good resources and now as we enter 2018 we really feel like we know what it means to disciple someone else and also to be a disciple of Jesus. Just like the word surrender, discipleship is going to keep going through the rest of our lives.

I wasn’t sure that we were going to do a word this year because I didn’t feel like God had placed anything on our hearts and I honestly didn’t think that we could top surrender or discipleship.  Just this week I was going through some reflection time on 2017 and thinking ahead to 2018 and I felt like God was really putting prayer on my heart.  I do feel like our prayer lives have been lacking and I felt like God was telling us that this was the thing we are to hone in on in 2018.  I asked for and received a yearly prayer journal from Val Marie Paper for Christmas. I have been preparing it for January and I am excited to start our year out focusing on prayer.

This quote from the Dad Tired Podcast Facebook page really stuck out to me:

I absolutely love this quote. It is a good reminder that I need to go to God not just daily, but throughout the day as well. I feel confident that God will be with us every step of the way as we really try to filter everything about our lives through Him. I don’t want to silently declare that I have more power over my life than Jesus does.

Here is to a prayer filled 2018!

The holiday season is well underway and I can feel the excitement starting to bubble.  I look forward to the holidays every year and it seems like every year I need to remind myself to stay focused on what the holidays are all about.

Holidays are used for remembering Jesus and his gift of humbly coming to live among us and laying down his life for us. We have a beautiful eternity waiting for us because Jesus chose to take the punishment for us all.

Here is how the holidays usually go for our family: We get really excited about the holidays coming up. We enjoy decorating our house and doing some holiday traditions. We start signing up for things without thinking about it because it is the holiday season and we can. We start to feel really stressed about gifts, obligations to family/friends, pressures we are putting on ourselves, etc. We end up needing to reevaluate the season and what it is for.

I don’t like that I get to the point every year where I need to reevaluate what I am doing.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5  

When I need to reevaluate what I am doing with my life, I find myself going back to John 15:5 over and over again.  I often want the future laid out for me so that I know where a decision is going to lead me when I take it. Life doesn’t work like that, often God only reveals a bit of his plan to us at a time.  When I am remaining in the vine, I am taking baby steps in faith and trusting that God is in charge of the whole world.

Another reason that I need to reevaluate at Christmas time is because of guilt.  Guilt is not a feeling that comes from God. Don’t get me wrong, God convicts us when we have sinned and are in need of repentance, but God doesn’t give us a spirit of guilt about our performances in life. When we feel like we are not good enough because of any obligation that we have put on ourselves or others have put on us, that is not from God. That is from the father of lies.

The holidays often bring up a lot of guilt for us because we want to be everything for everyone. We want our children to have great memories of holiday traditions that we created for them. We want our meals to be spectacular and we want to buy the perfect gift that will make our loved ones feel special. Everywhere we look this time of year, there are reminders about the things that we “should” be doing.

When we are connected to the vine, we know what we should be doing. We need to be having faith in Him and taking baby steps of faith each day.  Just this week I found myself wondering if we could afford family Christmas pajamas to give the kids on Christmas Eve. Then I feel like I add extra stress to myself because I then would want the perfect picture of the family wearing the pajamas to post to social media. Already here are two ways that I have been tempted to kick Jesus out of Christmas and worship the commercialism all around us.

Ultimately those pajamas would have been worn very few times and I probably would have been frustrated with my children if they weren’t cooperating for pictures. None of this teaches my children about the amazing gospel story and what a gift it was to receive our Immanuel (God with us) that Christmas so many years ago.

Maybe you are feeling connected to the vine and excited about the holidays approaching.  Maybe you are battling your own temptations to commercialize Christmas and add extra stress to your life. Let’s try and commit to making sure that we are abiding in Him this Christmas season and experience the true joy that comes from knowing Him instead of the counterfeit joy that comes from worshiping things of this earth.