The dictionary.com definition
of surrender is: to yield
something to the possession or power of another.
This year has required a lot
of surrender. Last October, at training camp, they told us that we would have
to surrender our family and friends to God. I understood why they told us this
but still thought that I would get them all back at the end of the year.
This past week we had a
re-entry training. They walked us through what some of it might look like for
us and warned us that a lot of family and friends would not understand our
perspective and that ultimately they would not ‘get us’ anymore.
In Matthew Jesus says:
“Don’t think I’ve come to make
life cozy. I’ve come to cut-make a sharp knife-cut between son and father,
daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law-cut through these cozy domestic
arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your
worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If
you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me. “If you don’t go
all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your
first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you
forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.-
Matthew 10:37-39 (MSG)
This week I realized
that some of the relationships I had before coming on the race will never be
the same. People probably will not understand me and the mindset I am coming from.
I felt God asking me
yet again if I would surrender some of these relationships to Him. When we
surrender things to God we have to do so expecting that we may never get it
back.
I am completely sold
out to God and His calling on my life. If that means that friends and family do
not understand me I have to be okay with that. If that means I have to
surrender these relationships to Him I have to be okay with that. God is
everything I have and is literally the only thing I need. He is the only one who
will ever fully understand me because He created me.
*I do not know if relationships will be surrendered, I just have to be open to the fact that this may happen.*
