Surrender.

Giving our heart to Jesus and living a life of surrender is a big part of Christian life. Unless
we surrender everything of us to God each day, we cannot make space for God to step into
our life and have His way. God has a big plan for our lives, and we need Him to help us
discover it and live it out. Surrendering means that we give up control and let God have His
own perfect way, whatever that may be & however that may look. When we place such high
value on something (people acceptance, job, career, lifestyle etc) there is no way we can
accept there will be something better, different and greater for us than this one thing that our
heart so passionately desires. However, if our desire for something else on this earth is bigger
than our desire for God and to be in relationship with Him then, we MUST immediately
surrender that. Because we were created by God, for God. We don’t want to idolize a dream
or desire over God.

Surrendering takes a whole lot of humility and trust in God and in His ability to work all
things for the good of those who love Him (US!).

Humility
God can only lift us up when we humble ourselves Infront of Him (James 4:10). Have you
ever heard of that saying, “When you kneel before God, you can stand before anyone”? It is
so true. God and His ways are always and forever perfect. Even when we have strong
desires, we must always seek Him first and humble ourselves before Him. It takes humility
to follow God when you think your way is right, it takes humility to say “okay” to God’s
word when you don’t understand How it will all make sense. Humility allows us to walk
through the uncertain path He has prepared for us to walk through.

Trust
Trust is hard. I’m not going to lie. When our hearts desire that one job, that one house, that
one course/career or even that one type of lifestyle, it is hard to keep our hearts and hands
open and say “God, whatever your will is, let it happen. I trust in you.”. It’s hard to let God in
when we are already fixed on an image of how and what we want our life to look like.
So, how do we trust in God? King Solomon tells us in proverbs 3:5 to not lean on our own
understanding but trust in Him with all our heart. This is how we do it! We stop leaning
on our own understanding and so we stop being led by our own ways. We stop trying to
figure out how things are going to work out or assume what will happen next, we don’t let
our past experiences affect the way we believe for the present/future promise. We put all our
trust and hope completely in Him and believe every word HE has spoken!

Although walking in humility and trusting God can be very difficult and different at first, we
are not alone. We can be fully open with God and tell Him to help us with our unbelief, teach
us to be humble. God is such a gracious father who looks at our heart, and the holy spirit will
strengthen you to walk in His ways. Ephesians 3:16 says, says, "That He would grant you,
according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit
into the inner man.". Prayer and vulnerability before God changes us and helps us.