1. to yield (something) to the possession or power of another; deliver up possession of on demand or under duress:
2. to give (oneself) up, as to the police.
3. to give (oneself) up to some influence, course, emotion, etc.:
4.to give up, abandon, or relinquish (comfort, hope, etc.).
5.to yield or resign (an office, privilege, etc.) in favor of another.
verb (used without object)
6.to give oneself up, as into the power of another; submit or yield.
Sometimes
the things that we are called to surrender are just that things...
When we get married, we are called to surrender some possessions to
make room for our spouses possessions... when we decide we want
something, like a new car, we have to surrender the old one to make
that happen...
Sometimes
the what we have to surrender is ourselves (ie definition number 2)
Sometimes
we have to surrender our emotions... like we surrender our anger or
our hurt and we replace it with joy... or sometimes we even surrender
our joy replacing it with anger or hurt!
A
friend of mine wonderfully stated that surrender is “giving in.
Sometimes we need to give in to something to allow for something else
that could be better to happen.”
So
when we are asked to surrender to God what does that mean? It means
that we need to give ourselves up... DUH... But who are we? Are we
just a physical being, or even an emotional one? Are we just our
soul? I would venture to say (in agreement with Barlow Girl) we are
our dreams! Well, we are a combination of our past experiences and
our future dreams/goals/hopes.
In some ways it is easier to give our past experiences to God because they have already happened! (Not that it's EASY! just easier) But our dreams, that is something completely different! We have invested time and energy into our dreams. But I think that's what God wants most!
Now how do we surrender ourselves and our dreams to God? That's different for every person and every situation, but I think that our surrender comes when we chose to continue to follow God and trust him even when the road doesn't flow exactly where we thought it would... When we tell God through our actions, You are more important that what I want, or thought my life was going to be!! It's that simple (I know not simple right?)
But trust me, I'm living this right now! If you know me, you know I have wanted to do missions since I was 8 years old! I am now 26 and for the first time got the chance to come to Colombia in what I thought was going to be a self organized missions trip. I was going to be here for 5 weeks, and 3-4 of those weeks I was going to be working in a orphanage! But here I am 2 1/2 weeks in and have been at the orphanage 1 day! And I found out today that I don't get to go back! So now where does that leave me? I don't know, and that's hard... But I have spent the last 2 hours praying and saying God I surrender that which I wanted to do, even though it was a good thing, to whever else you want me to do! It's been hard, and I was upset and bummed, but I KNOW that God provided a way for me to be here and led me here. I just have to rest in that knowledge! And wait yet again for the fullfilment of my dreams! (BTW I also know I will struggle with this on and off, it's not just simply solved)
Before I even found out for sure about that, I was listening to the Barlow Girl song "Surrender" that's actually what inspired me to write this blog. so i'm going to end my blog with that... Listen to the words, and know that when God does ask us to surrender our dreams/ourselves, He has something so much better planned! :)
(and in case the video doesn't work properly for you here, here is the site... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG7lBZAULE8
