I come from a line of frugal, do it yourself, ‘where there is a will there is a way’ kind of people. It’s a legacy I appreciate as it has served me well. But like with all good things, there can be an edge to it. An edge that says, ‘I’ve got to take care of this’. In reality there is nothing wrong with having a get it done kind of attitude, but it turns into self-reliance and self-sufficiency God is edged out of the picture and we set ourselves up in an illusion.
We hear of wars and rumors of wars. We hear of Iran testing missiles. We hear of doom about our financial stability. We hear of scandal. We hear of socialism. We hear of conservatism. We hear of racism. We hear of devestation. We hear of things that shake our world such as a diagnosis of defeat, of cancer, or of death.
The illusion I spoke of? It gets revealed when we get hit with news that no amount of will or determination or do it yourselfness can begin to improve.
So what then? Do we try harder? Do we do more? Do we deny the circumstances?
Do we find our trust in God wavering?
It’s situations like these that reveal exactly whether we truly mean the words: ‘I trust in you, God’.
Have I merely given lip service to my God? Do I even understand what it means to trust Him? There was a time in my life that I underlined or circled every time the word trust was used in the book of Psalms. I needed to see just how important trust was in the lives of believers and how important it is to God. I don’t want to give lip service to my God, He means too much to me to do that and yet….sometimes I do.
This is the deal….
Confidence is one of those words whose definition gets infused with our humanness and can be translated into arrogance, or self-reliance, and maintaining control with God as our back-up.
Holy confidence, however, is putting God between us and our circumstance. Let me restate that. Holy confidence is not blindly saying that I believe God will take care of it. Holy confidence is putting God between us and our circumstance and seeing him.
It’s seeing his strength. It’s seeing his goodness. It’s seeing his provision. It’s seeing his righteousness. It’s seeing his power. It’s seeing his healing. It’s seeing his mercy. It’s seeing his freedom.
It seeing all these things first and then seeing your circumstance. I am awed that when I focus on my God’s attributes and care and concern for me, my circumstances seem small because my God seems big. But when I focus on an overwhelming circumstance God seems small. And my trust wavers.
It’s not me and God working out a problem. It’s me behind God. God behind my circumstance. My circumstance cannot overwhelm me because it has to go through God first. I cannot affect the outcome of my circumstance because I have to go through God first. When I step out into self-confidence — two things happen to me. An illusion is created and I take responsibility for bearing the burden of my circumstance.
Holy Confidence is placing God between you and your circumstance. Keep your eyes focused on him. Look at your circumstance through his strength and not your own. Look to him for your every breath and move. He never fails and is faithful.
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.
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.
