Which does the Lord want? Does he want my commitment or does he want my surrender? What exactly do these two words mean? I tell myself that I need to be more committed to spending time with the Lord. I need to be committed to loving people and serving others. But it is hard. I have weeks where I fail more than I succeed. And then I have weeks where I don’t do so bad. But it’s in the empty weeks where I stumble and fall and see just how clearly wretched I can be and how I just don’t want to do ‘this’ anymore because it is so so hard. So I looked up these couple of words and I found something I hadn’t known before.
Surrender:
to yield something to the possession of power to another
to give oneself up in to the power of another
to give up, abandon, or relinquish
to yield in favor of another
Commitment
to pledge
to bind or obligate
to give in trust or charge
to entrust for safekeeping
to do, perform
to engage oneself
The differences are subtle and it would be easy to exchange one for the other and mean the same thing, but I see something different between the two that is vital. It appears that with commitment I still retain authority over whether or not I commit. Commitment involves me doing something–pledging, obligating, or giving someone charge of something. Surrender involves yielding. Yielding is getting out of the way and giving authority of oneself up to the Lord.
I have been committed without surrender. Commitment without surrender has led to my lack of consistency in my walk with Christ. When I commit without surrender I am telling myself that I get to choose when and where I am committed to Christ. Maybe it’s just on Sunday mornings or when I am out and about, but the commitment can wane when I am with my family and I allow myself to act and say things that I would never dream of acting or saying to anyone else.
But surrender is where consistent Christ-living occurs. Surrender must be active and present for commitment to become woven into our daily moments no matter what we face. Maybe I need to be less of a committed Christian and more of a surrendered Christian. Maybe our churches need to preach more about surrendering instead of committing. Maybe we have it backwards.
Surrender first. Yield oneself to the power and grace of the Lord. Surrender all we are and hope to become. Surrender our pain and our joys. Surrender our wills to the one who knows us better than we know ourselves. Surrender to the One who holds us in his palm and whispers love to us in the darkest of days and deepest of nights.
Commitment second. Once surrender occurs, commitment is a natural progression. Surrendering leads to a people working through the power of the Holy Spirit and commitment alone leads to a people working through themselves which leads to inconsistency and legalism. Surrender is a yielding to the Lord’s authority and then giving him our pledge to live as he would have us to live. Without surrender commitment is empty and becomes a choice.
I know that each day I need to get up and surrender again. And sometimes I need to surrender every moment to the One who is my hope. I wish I could say this is an easy thing, but my heart deceives and who can know it? It is a fight to remain in that surrendered place and so I often I slip out of it without even realizing it.
I can only describe my experience with slipping out of that surrendered place and it usually starts with a dissatisfaction with the way things are. I begin looking around at all the pain and hurts in those around me and myself. I begin to focus on the unanswered prayers or the news that smacks me around and down. I begin being too aware of my present and not aware enough of his presence. These are clues that I have slipped out of surrender. Another clue is when commitment wanes and becomes too hard.
It’s both surrender and commitment. Working together. Complementing each other. Bringing purpose to our days. I need to choose both. Surrender and commitment, but commitment becomes a whole lot easier if I surrender first. Surrender is a loss of freedom that gives me freedom to commit and live for the Lord. It’s both and.
I have been pondering growth a lot lately. It is probably due to this conference I have been asked to participate in that has me thinking about soil and seeds and water and nutrients.
I watched my babies grow and celebrated each milestone and worried over each delayed milestone. In parenting I have felt the pressure that all children should be experiencing this or that by a certain age even though it is common knowledge that not one child is like the other and therefore have different rates of growth and achievement.
At times that’s been difficult to remember.
I am at a point in my parenting where I am, at times, anxiously waiting for the seeds that I planted into my kids’ hearts to take root and grow. When they were young I amended their heart’s soil by adding in the nutrients of unconditional love, which did what was best for them and not necessarily what they wanted.
I planted the seeds of kindness, selflessness, respect, responsibility, repentance, and forgiveness. I hopefully gave them the right tools to tend to the garden of their souls.
I watered it with gentle responses (at times not so gentle and thank God for their forgiving hearts). I watered it with showing them kindness and respect. I watered it with humbling apologizing for my own parenting failures. I water it with prayer.
Now I wait. I continue to plant those seeds, but now I wait.
I wait for God to give the growth. I can walk my kids through the steps of what selflessness looks like. Maybe it’s seeing trash on the floor and instead of walking by it, we go together to pick it up and throw it away. Or maybe it’s doing a sibling’s chore. And sometimes it’s walking with them through the repentance and forgiveness process for something they did wrong.
But I wait for God to cause those seeds to grow in their hearts. I cannot make them grow. I cannot force them grow. I want to though.
Especially when it’s hard to wait on God.
This is part of my rest. This is part of my desperation for God. It’s the waiting on him. It’s the stilling of my mind and soul and emotions to be still in his presence and whisper, ‘God? Here I am. I am a jumbled mess. But here I am.’ and then be quiet.
Being quiet in God’s presence takes practice. It takes discipline. It takes moments of failure to train our minds to be quiet. To be quiet of worry, but to be loud in pondering the nature of God:
The goodness of Him.
The mercy.
The kindness.
The love of God, the love so overwhelming that it drives out all fear.
The power of God that causes those seeds to grow.
You are a seed planter. Plant your seeds and wait on God to water them and grow them.
Resting is one of the most difficult thing for me to do. I usually have a book in hand, design articles to peruse, photography tutorials to practice, or talking to whoever is nearby. If I actually rest, where I close my eyes and still my body and quiet my mind, I last for about 30 minutes. I call it my power nap and it is really effective, but the kind of rest I am pondering for the new year is a different kind of rest.
It is the first week of 2016 and I am surrounded by resolutions and goals and I have decided to rest. Here I have a new year at my finger tips to accomplish goals and I choose to rest? Is it really a code name for ‘lazy’? Is it a cop-out?
Just as desperation is my resolve this year, rest is my means of feeding that desperation.
Isaiah 30:15a ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength’.
I believe that God is for me–he is for everyone who put their trust in him– and if I believe he is for me than I know that he says that I am an overcomer.
The thing is, when I hear the word ‘overcomer’ I don’t think of desperation and rest. I think of fighting and battling and not giving up. However, this verse talks to me of repentance and rest.
Repentance is one step to overcoming.
Repentance is turning from that which hinders my walk with Christ.
Rest is being confident that I cannot save myself, it is a gift of God.
Rest is a unencumbered trust in my Lord.
When I repent and rest in the Truth, I find my salvation. I find peace. I find that the everyday gunk of life is not insurmountable.
Rest is my strength.
I don’t feel strong after a session of worrying. I feel weak and hopeless. I don’t feel desperate for the Lord. I feel desperate to fix a situation that I have no way to fix. Worrying and fretting weakens the power of prayer and prayer becomes the last thing I resort to instead of being the first weapon I pick up.
It sounds a little like upside down thinking, but I have found that quieting my mind, will, emotions, and trusting God’s heart for me to be the greatest thing I can do to strengthen my soul.
There is something about a new year, whether it be a new school year or the turning of a calendar page to a new month, that can fill us with anticipation and excitement and plans.
I know myself well and know that it is futile to make those resolutions that I am sure to be excited over and watch the excitement fade in a very short time. The New Year then becomes a fresh reminder of failure. Same song, new refrain.
I don’t like to fail.
I don’t think I am alone. I think I am becoming more willing to take risks, but my strong avoidance of New Year’s Resolutions tells me that I may still be hiding from failure.
But what if I told you there was a New Year’s Resolution that promises a guaranteed success? It has nothing to do with weight loss or eating habits or exercise or self improvement. In fact it has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with God.
What if this was the year that you committed to knowing him more?
No matter what.
What if we resolved to ask him for more of himself in our lives?
Everyday.
It’s not a program of do’s and do’s and rule’s and rule’s.
But it’s a desperation for more of him.
What if this were the year that we make desperation our resolve?
‘God, I am desperate for you. For more of you. For your goodness and kindness and greatness. For your gentleness and your wildness. I want you.’
Could we make that our prayer?
I can guarantee that we may not be able to dictate how our year turns out and we can’t expect to control the outcome, but I can guarantee that it will be a ride, that in the end, and maybe with a few year’s perspective behind us, we will not regret taking.
In our current society, I have found that children are considered a blessing if you have the requisite one or two and then done, but the responses to much more than that can be varied. I have four, a small or large number, depending on your perspective. My fourth was celebrated by some and barely acknowledge by others. It all depends on perspective.
In biblical times, fertility was seen as a blessing and infertility as a curse. Blessings were tied to doing things ‘right’ and curses were seen as ‘obviously, you have some unforgiven sin in your life and that is why ‘this’ is or is not happening to you’. This type of response still happens today, but that is a topic for another day. Today my heart is pondering Zechariah and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth uses the word ‘reproach’ to describe her state in her community. The word reproach implies that she was an object of disgrace, that she was blamed for her infertility, and that she was criticized by her community. This is one of our few insights into Elizabeth’s heart. God’s own words assures us that she and Zechariah were blameless and upright and kept all the laws of God. We can learn a lot about their hearts in that one statement.
Misunderstood. I would use that word to describe Elizabeth’s place in her community. She knew in her heart what God said about her, but she had to hear with her ears what her community said about her. That is a difficult place to be and it can either grow your faith or grow your bitterness. You get to decide.
Being misunderstood is a part of this life.
So how do we maneuver being misunderstood with the truth of who we are in Christ?
That is a question we must address as we move forward in this walk of life. I believe it has to become an internal tension we must grow to accept because the truth of the matter is that we will not always be understood.
We will be misunderstood.
What we do with it will shape our character.
We can defend ourselves.
We can be silent.
We can put up a wall.
We can protect ourselves.
But what if we did this instead: we accept the misunderstandings others have about us then we ask the Lord if there is any truth in the misconceptions about us, and finally, most importantly, we lay the truth of God’s word over the misunderstanding and let the word of God determine our course of action.
Sometimes it’s being secure in the truth that we are doing exactly what the Lord has asked of us. Sometimes it’s speaking the truth in love with grace. Sometimes it’s letting go of the priority we place on another person’s perception about us.
But mostly it’s about trusting God’s heart towards us and being secure in the knowledge that he is for us.
He is for you. You can trust his heart because his heart is good towards you.
This time of year fills me with a sense of awe and wonder.
It’s the time of year that I choose to deeply ponder the coming of Christ in flesh. The reminders are all around me; the house is decorated for the month long ‘birthday party’. The city streets in our rural communities have their wreaths attached to the light poles reminiscent of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.
One of the things that I wonder about though, is this: ‘Did Mary have a wonderful life?’ She was the one chosen to carry and birth and raise the son of God. Religions revere her, some even pray to her as if she is a holy icon. She was just a girl. A girl with a heart of faith and trust and submission. She was chosen, but it was not through a ‘pageant’ where the winner won the right to carry the son of God. Basically, it was not about her, it was about God and his promised covenant and it was the right time.
‘How can this be?’ was her question to the angel who bore the news. It was not a question of disbelief. It was a question with an underlying tone of acceptance. Imagine what our lives would look like if instead of questioning God on whether he knows what he is doing or demanding a ‘sign’ that what he is saying is true, we simply believed. We simply trusted.
One of the many truths he whispers to us is this: he is for us. What if we said, ‘How can it be?’ instead of ‘How can I know this is true?’ Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist had a heavenly visitor as well, but his response is remarkable different, but the significance can be easily missed. He wanted to intellectually wrap his brain around the angel’s news rather than embrace it with a heart of faith.
It could be the large age difference between Zechariah and Mary that birthed the two very different responses. We could justify Zechariah’s response by saying that he probably sought God for years on this very subject (the desire for a child), and years passed with the answer of ‘no’. I understand where he is coming from. I think we all have petitioned God for something or someone and the answer we receive is not the deeply desired ‘yes’, but the deeply feared ‘no’.
Mary, a young woman, not hardened by the burdens and seasons of life, had the faith of a child. A faith we are all called to have. A faith that can only come from the Father. Even that is amazing! We don’t have to stir up this faith on our own, we simply have to believe and let him build our faith. No matter our age.
Do you think Zechariah ever doubted the Lord’s goodness and ways again? He had more than nine months to wrestle with his need for ‘reassurance’, all the while seeing with his own eyes the Lord’s plan unfolding–whether he believed the Lord or not. Could he have been bursting to share with others what God had done for him and Elizabeth?
But I think there is a bigger picture here than what we see on the surface.
It wasn’t about Zechariah and Elizabeth at all.
It wasn’t about Mary at all.
It wasn’t about the key players in the Christmas story.
It was about God and his plan to redeem the world.
To redeem you and me. And that is the greatest gift.
But even then it’s not about us.
What would happen if we changed our perspective on answered prayer or unanswered prayer, whichever way you want to look at it, and saw not through the lens of receiving blessing, but we saw through the lens of what God wants in the overall big picture of this world, and how he wants us to bless him, through it all.
Through all the yes’ and all the no’s.
We can turn it all into praise.
We can accept, with a faith filled heart, his promise that he is for us, asking, ‘How can it be?’, and then watch the Lord’s promise unfold in ways that take out breath away.
