- All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.- I surrender all,
I surrender all;
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.
- I surrender all,
What does this even mean?! I don’t know how to do this, I have no clue how to surrender. I was struck by this epiphany this morning as I lay in bed. Well, that might not quite be true, I’ve been wrestling with it for a while now, but as I lay in bed this morning I began to truly grieve my inability to lay down my control and allow God to work in my life. You see, I truly do want to change and grow, I want to be made new, I want to be different than I am, I want my behaviours and actions to reflect the Christ that is in me, but I want to do it. I want to be in control, I want to do the work instead of allowing Him to do a work in me.
Joey and I have been teaching our squad a brand new set of leadership and discipleship tools that have not been introduced to any other squads before us, and it is so great! It takes a lot of self reflection and honesty, it takes time and patience and grace, it takes intentionality, We start by casting vision, essentially we set a mission statement for our lives, we then begin to assess where we are at currently, and then set goals to help us begin to move out of our current reality and take strides towards our vision. We are Here, we want to get There, and the goals are a pathway for us to begin to do it. Simple right? HA!
I am discovering that it is ugly work, and as I have been equipping others with these tools that help to push us into more intentional living I have not actually been doing the work myself. I grasp all of the concepts alright, I have a clear understanding of what the tools look like, but I have yet to actually step into the hard work of intentional living that our squad is stepping into. Why? Because I’m scared. I am scared of the self reflection and all of the ugliness that it will show, scared of displaying my imperfections, scared if letting go of my tight grip on control and actually allowing God to change and grow me. I have been slowly stepping into some of the tools for self reflection and found that one of the core values that I hold onto in my life is control. I have built my house upon it, it is part of my foundation, and it’s ugly.
Matt 7:24-27
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
My false sense of control is a shifting sand that will crumble in the storm. I don’t want this to be one of the values upon which I build my house, it is detrimental to my marriage, my friendships, and my relationship with God. It speaks of my inability to trust others because I always need to be in control. It speaks of my pride, it points towards my fear of failure, my performance driven self, and my need to succeed. It is ugly, and it’s not a place that I want to stay in. But how do I surrender, it is the exact opposite of control. How do I begin to trust? I honestly don’t know…
This is where I am at right now, I ask for prayers as I begin to excavate the shaky foundations that I have built my house upon so that I can allow the Lord to build a new one for me.
