Day 13 Choose Surrender: Walk by Faith

2 Corinthians 5:7 "We walk by faith, not by sight."

Are you willing to follow God wherever He leads you? Is it enough that even if you don't know what lies ahead, He knows?

When I look at my life today, some of my richest blessings came from walking His path even when it wasn't the path I desired...the path I had in mind. I wouldn't have those blessings today if I didn't surrender my heart to Him and walk through the difficulties and pain to get to Him.

Sara tells us in her book, Choose Joy: Finding Hope and Purpose When Life Hurts, that she saw her life as a blessing. If the life she lived and surrendered to God even made a difference in one persons life, she wouldn't want anything else!

Walking by faith requires that we listen and obey the voice of the Holy Spirit and follow the truth of God's word. We choose to live according to what God reveals to us, rather than trusting our own understanding of what the world tells us.

Sara's prayer was that God would change her heart and align it with His. She wanted a heart that would rather serve Him than her own desires. Along the journey are difficulties, but there are also the richest blessings and a heart of joy that makes the experience worth every step.

Day 12 Choose Surrender: Serving Others

In the above video, Alece, Jessica and Matthew provide a beautiful testimony on how Sara served others. Sara was a true example of someone who surrendered their life to God, and I think that is shown in how she loved and served others. Sara surrendered her life to God and because of that, she was able to serve us with her whole mind, heart and soul. 

The greatest commandment God gave to us, was to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this, Love your neighbor as yourself." (Mark 12:30-31)

As I reflect on Mark 12:30-31, I think of Jesus, the greatest servant of us all. He surrendered His life to God in order to fulfill God's perfect will. Surrendering His life through self-sacrifice...death on the cross. This kind of surrender can only be accomplished because of the depth of love in our heart.

Greg Simas says, "the devotion of our hearts is determined by wherever we find value as our greatest treasure." Matthew 6:21 tells us for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Jesus just gave us the answer on how to love God with all our hearts. The heart loves what it treasures! 

The treasure in Sara's heart was God and others. 

Day 11 Choose Surrender: By Grace Alone

How do we surrender to God?

We want and desire to surrender to Him, but in our humanness and sinfulness we are controlled by doubt and impulses of worry and fear.

In Sara’s book, Choose Joy: Finding Hope and Purpose WhenLife Hurts, she talks about God’s gift of free will and our ability to choose. I think that God looks at our “will”… our want…our desire…to do what honors Him and then He works in us to do what is pleasing to Him, according to His purpose. When I think about my will or desires, they come from my heart. They come from the love I have for God. Therefore, our job is to surrender our “will,” our heart, to Him.

Matthew 11:28-30 says, “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.”

God invites us to experience joy and blessing in life through Him. It is through grace alone we are forgiven of the sinfulness of doubt, worry and fear that keep us from fully surrendering to Him. It is through grace alone that we are able to take up our cross and follow Him…to be His disciples.

As Christians we must surrender our will to His will. It is through Him we will love what He loves and hate what He hates. (Psalm 97:10)

Graced by God's presence we learn that while we are less than perfect, who we are by God's grace, can be enough. By God's grace, each day can be lived with hope and purpose...and with His grace, we can choose joy.

Day 10 Choose Surrender: The Eternal Perspective

My husband and I are part of a small group through our church. One of the books we read and studied was The Story, by Randy Frazee. I loved the way Randy talked about two different stories unfolding with every story in the bible. The lower story and the upper story.

In the lower story, just like the stories we read in the bible, we are dealing with things in the here and now. Things that are part of our day to day lives; paying bills, going to work, dealing with conflict, etc. In the upper story we are learning how God is weaving our story into His divine story for us, which is returning to live in love with Him for all eternity.

So how do we know and understand how God is weaving our lower story into His upper story? By trusting His plan and surrendering to Him. By fulfilling the mission He sent us to achieve in this lower story before we head back home to Him. 

My sister Sara was part of a group of (in)courage bloggers. (In)courage put together a beautiful video of several friends Sara met through her blog www.gitzengirl.blogspot.com. These friends shared their perspective on Sara's joy and the difference she made in their lives.

I want to share with you a clip of that video as Alece describes for us how Sara was able to live out her lower story while trusting the upper story plan God had for her.

Alece's perspective on how Sara was able to choose joy speaks to the importance in our life of how we must surrender our lower story life to God in order to one day experience the love and joy of our upper story with God.

Day 9 Choose Surrender: Life's Rewards

In one of our Wednesday night services at church the reading was from Luke 16:19-31, the story of a rich man and a beggar. The rich man lived in luxury and Lazarus, a beggar, would lie at the rich man’s gate longing to eat what was left from the rich man’s table. When the beggar died, the angels took him to sit at Abraham’s side. When the rich man died and was in hell, he looked up and saw Lazarus by Abraham’s side. The rich man asked Abraham to have Lazarus come and quench his thirst.  Abraham replied, by reminding Lazarus that in his lifetime he received good things and Lazarus received bad things. Now Lazarus is comforted in Heaven and the rich man is in in agony.

As I was reflecting on this story, the question that came to my mind was…Are we living well, so we can die well?

When God blesses us, do we take those blessings and keep them selfishly for ourselves, or are we choosing to take those blessings and bless others?

God gave us free will and the ability to make our own choices. He wanted to experience true love from His created...US! He created us for His pleasure and that pleasure wouldn’t be achieved if we were programmed like robots to love Him. God wants our unconditional love.  He wants us to love Him willingly.

How do we achieve life’s ultimate reward? By surrendering our life to Him and living the life He intended us to live.

When I do leadership training and development, we ask leaders…how do you want to be remembered? What leadership legacy do you want to leave?

I think we should ask the same questions as we look to achieve life’s reward of Heaven…How do you want to be remembered? What legacy do you want to leave? And most important, who does He want you to be? What purpose were we sent to achieve?

In the book, Choose Joy: FindingHope and Purpose When Life Hurts, my sister Sara talks about the life goals that she chose for herself. They were goals of how she wanted to live in her spirit and she wished she would’ve made these goals when she was well and able bodied…

To not be ashamed to stand before God.

To fulfill God’s plan by living the best life I can with what I am given.

To be aware and present in every moment.

To love what I have and not yearn for what I lack.

To spread the joy and not the fear

To be intentional in all things.

     Throughout our life, God rewards us with many blessings and the ultimate reward for our life is one day sitting at His right hand. How we live out our life will determine if we achieve life’s ultimate reward.

     

     Surrender your life to Him and you will have life’s ultimate reward with Him.

Day 8 Choose Surrender: Control is an Illusion

Control…

I think one of the reasons it is so hard for us to surrender, is that it means we have to give up control. Something I think most of us can admit we aren’t good at doing.

We have been trained early on to set goals and follow those dreams and goals. How many of us have set goals only to find out they aren’t turning out how we envisioned?

Our attempts to control things in our world are seen through trying to control how our children turn out; tracking our life from exercise to how many “likes” we get on a social media post; planning projects, parties and trips…the list goes on and on.

What happens when all this planning doesn’t turn out how we envision? I know for me, the result is anxiety, worry and stress…the list goes on and on.

In the book Choose Joy: Finding Hope and Purpose When Life Hurts, Sara shares with us her experience of trying to be in control of her life, her health, her future. Through this control she shares with us that “it is through the hardest times in her life that she stayed open enough to learn her greatest lesson. Control is an illusion.”

James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

God uses the circumstances in our life to help us grow. If we allow ourselves to be open to what God needs from us, it will change our heart. Through Sara’s circumstances, she not only learned that control is an illusion, she also learned that the only thing she can control is whether she chooses to open her heart. Open her heart to embrace the circumstances she was given so that she could fulfill the mission and purpose God had for her.

Sara’s life is a true example that it works! When we let go of the illusion of control and surrender our lives to the one who is in control, we find peace and joy in this life.

Day 7 Choose Surrender: Spiritual Beings

We are not human beings living out a spiritual existence. We are spiritual beings living out a human existence. I don’t know about you, but the difference in those two sentences changes my outlook on my journey to surrendering.

When we make this world about us, we begin to worry about our health, finances and other earthly possessions. Our focus becomes on our wants, needs and desires. Whether our life is going well or we are struggling with pain, we must ultimately remember who we are…a spirit born in the image of Christ…here to fulfill a purpose before we go back home. Think about that…doesn’t it completely change how you feel? 

For me, it makes surrendering seem natural and safe.

In the book, Choose Joy: Finding Hope and Purpose when LifeHurts, Sara reminds us that “we have a mission. We have a purpose. We are here to live the best life we can, with what we are given.” We are here to live out this human existence as a spiritual being.

We must choose through our free will to allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit. As a spirit born in the image of Christ, we can surrender by not separating ourselves from our creator. 

Stay connected with Him. He is the creator of Heaven and Earth. He is the Lord of all that is and all that will be. Our job is to choose to surrender to Him.