Surrendering by turning it over
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Surrendering is difficult, especially when you find yourself in situations where you have been hurt and your trust broken. When you find yourself sitting with dreams which have not yet come to light or desires of your heart which have not yet been met, surrendering those dreams and desires can be a challenge. My natural instinct, like many I would imagine, is to keep my hands on things, to think about and plan ways to get things to work or change, all while praying to God to tell Him how we think He should resolve our problems.
My theme for February seems to have been on of Surrender. Not only through the prompts on my Scrapbook*life*journal but also on the book study that I am doing on a Confident Heart. Both are really focusing on surrendering, on giving to God those things which should be his. Those things that we hold so tightly onto but can’t do anything about, or in some cases we can do something about but we shouldn’t, we should leave it up to our maker.
Last weekend I did some sorting out of the cupboards in my bedroom and I came across this little box that I had decorated a few years ago. Inside of my box were some carefully folded slips of papers which I cautiously picked up, unfolded and read through. I sat there with tears streaming down my face as I realised this was my Turning it over box. A box that I had created to help me physically symbolise the handing over of dreams, worries and prayers to God during a time in my life when my heart was broken, my dreams appeared to be shattered and I didn’t have a clue as to what to do next. I knew that I had to surrender to His timing and His will instead of trying to fix or change things in my own strength, but at the time I was struggling with it and I guess I created this box as a reminder of what I needed to do on a daily basis.
Months have gone by since I made that box, but many of those pieces of papers that I found inside my box are still not answered. The thing that I realised though, while sitting there surrounded by these old prayers, is that a lot of them I am still carrying around with me, still trying to fix on my own. I haven’t truly given them up to God. While I was sitting there realising this, I felt that God was whispering to my heart saying that the process that I wanted to start back up again was great, but I had to be careful not to go back and take it out of the box. If I was going to surrender my dreams and desires to Him, then I would probably have to consciously do it on a daily basis, and truly hand it over to Him.
Here I sit, a week later, and I have just finished rewriting and dating my prayers, dreams and wishes that I will be surrendering over to God. I plan to spend 5 minutes each night before I go to bed to go through them and, when God answers some of them, I want to not only thank him for doing that but I want to record it. My hope for my box is that it will come to hold the treasures of my heart, that it will be a physical reminder to me of God’s faithfulness over the years and that I will be able to use it to share God’s love with other people.
Surrendering will not be easy, but I know that it is something that God requires of me. Surrendering will allow Him to guide my life, it means acknowledging Him in all things. Most importantly, and this has been the biggest lesson for me this week, Surrendering means that I finally understand that I cannot make it without His constant guidance and protection.
What things do you need to surrender to God today?
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