As I look back and reflect on all that God has done throughout these past two months on the race and within my Spiritual Formation class, I’m blown away by what the Lord has taught me. The Lord has taken me from step one to step forty. Well at least it feels that way. God has shown me things I never thought I would see, revealed Himself to me in ways I could have never imagined, and taught me lessons that elevated my understanding. I’ve been through ups and downs, experiencing some of the most intimate moments of my life with God, but also experiencing some of the hardest spiritual battles. Nonetheless, throughout this whole journey there has a been a constant lesson that God is teaching me. He is showing me what it means to surrender.
Every blog I’ve written for Truett McConnell, new experience, and story I’ve told from living overseas all comes back to the act of surrender. The Lord has and still continues to teach me the power of surrender. This whole crazy journey of the World Race is a surrender in itself. From surrendering my conforms to surrendering my pride and everything in between, He is using the World Race as a way to get me in the habit of letting go. He’s teaching me how to surrender not only the big situations in life, but also the little things in my daily walk with Him.
He is teaching me to surrender my words. God has shown me that my words have power. They have the power to give life or death. Either I choose life by choosing to surrender or I choose death by choosing my own way. God has given me the gift of speaking and writing so that I can enrich His kingdom and glorify Him. Throughout this past year journaling has become a great tool for me. It has helped me come to the Lord honestly with my struggles, pains, hurts, joys, and everyday life experiences. Before I barely journaled and when I did they weren’t intentional, but when I started the race my journal entries became letters to God. The more I journaled the more it became apart of my daily life. Eventually, it became a way for the Lord and I to be in nonstop communication with each other. When I journal God uses my words as a vessel to answer my heart’s deepest questions. The more I wrote and spent time with Him the more I was able to recognize His voice in my writings. He spoke over me, tore down the walls in my heart, and turned my focus back to Him by simply using the power of His breath. When I pray He reminds me who I am and my purpose by declaring who He is. I have been learning that prayer is another way for me to be in constant conversation with Him every moment of everyday when I don’t have a pen and paper handy. In scripture, He comforts, guides, teaches, challenges, and grows me to replicate Christ. He is using words in a mighty way to touch the deepest parts of my soul. I never thought that words would have such power until the Lord showed me what it looks like to surrender my words. Once let go of what I had to say I was able to experience Him in all these new and crazy ways within my words. I saw how He started writing my blogs with the intention of touching others. I saw how He started writing my journal entries to teach, grow, and challenge me. He even started to discern my words when speaking with someone. God has and continues to reveal so much to me in both His words and mine when I just lay them down at His feet. By simply surrendering my words I’m able to grow closer to the Father, understand His character more, and learn to love, trust, and obey Him with all of my heart.
God is showing me how to surrender the distractions in my life. Whether it’s food, social media, spending money, etc. they can all become a distraction. I didn’t realize how distracted I get when I feed my human desires. Not until that is, I started growing closer to the Lord. The more we spent time together the more He would expose those areas in my life where I’m distracted by something that is not of Him. At some points on the race so far, He has put in on my heart to fast. In my time of fasting, He showed me how to rely on Him alone for all of my needs included a need as simple as food. He opened my eyes to see Him in a new light that is free from distractions. He taught me that food isn’t a bad thing; He created it and gave it to us to enjoy. Nonetheless in this day and age, we use food as our comfort, entertainment, a distraction from reality, and a way for us to break away from what really need to be done. When I laid this at His feet and surrendered my distraction of food I allowed Him to provide, comfort, entertain, love, and sustain me. It allowed Him to become my number one priority instead of always thinking about my next meal.
The Lord is training me to surrender my will and my story. He is the author and the creator of everything. He started writing His story long ago. His story includes my story and the stories of my seven million brothers and sisters from all nations all over the world. He’s writing our stories and creating it to collide into one story; His story. As a result, He is revealing to me that my story is not my own. He was the one that gave me this story to tell so therefore only He has the authority to tell me when to share it. I use to believe that I had authority of my own story, but I was completely missing the point. When I surrendered my story and let Him use it the way He wanted to, I saw how He impacted those around me. I saw how the simple act of surrender can activate a spark in someone else’s life. A spark that lead them back to Christ. By simply surrendering my story, I’ve seen how God is using my life to other people’s lives too. The Lord is also illustrating the power of surrendering my will. Many times I try to do things in my own strength because I’m stubborn and selfish. As much as I love the Lord I also happen to fight with Him quite often too. I fight with Him because I want my own way and believe it is better than what He has to offer. After some hard lessons and many times of failures, I’m slowly starting to let go of my own wills, wants, and desires. I’m slowly starting to surrender everything all at His feet. My desires use to be one’s that would amplify my life, but I no longer seek that. His desires have now become my desires. God’s wants and ways are becoming my wants and ways. When I finally step back and let God take control He is faithful in showing me how purely good, loving, and gracious His ways are. By surrendering my wills and desires I’ve been able to see a bigger picture of what God is doing and His character.
He is prompting me to surrender my act of worship. I use to care more about what others thought of me more than what God thought of me. I use to put my identity in people around me and depend on them for encouragement, but they always let me down; leaving me hurt and broken. This was a big issue for me when it came to worship. I sought others opinions of how I worshipped and refrained myself from being free. I was afraid of being seen differently and judged by how I come to the Lord in praise. Then I just couldn’t hold that burden any longer. I was exhausting to constantly be thinking and worrying about what others said about me. I was done with the chains and trying to please people in my worship to the Lord. When I finally surrendering that burden to the Lord I was able to embrace God in magnificent ways. I’ve been able to experience reckless freedom in worship. I was able to bow to Him in reverence at His throne room. I have cried in awe and thanksgiving because of His glory, presence, and power. I sang with no reservations because He deserves it and I danced like there isn’t a care in the world. As I sung, danced, and bowed the Lord showed up in a meaningful way. He showed me visions of us dancing on my wedding day. He showed me that He loves to be reckless and His love is in fact reckless too. He reminded me not worry about what others around me are doing, instead indulge in the moment of awe with the Lord. He showed me that by surrendering I can do anything in worship if I just let go and let Him.
He is encouraging me to surrender my heart. My heart is the most precious thing I have. It allows the most beautiful and joyous memories in my life to prance around my heart freely, but it also contains the vault to my deepest secrets, regrets, and pains. I would always keep a wall up and reject God when He came to close or when our relationship seemed too good to be true. I let Him into the the joyest times in my life, but I let nobody, not even myself, into the vault of darkness that dwelled in my heart. But God is so gracious and patient. He knew that my heart is a tender place and one that needs to be taken with precaution. So He waits patiently for me to let go. He works on my heart tenderly and sometimes He breaks down my heart to build it back up again into something better than before. One day at a time He slowly chisels at the walls that I built to block Him out of those dark times in order to heal me from it. He’s slowly showing me how to surrender those pains, hurts, and regrets too even though most of the time I don’t want to. No matter how hard it is, He’s building up my trust so that I can allow Him to break the chains that are holding me back from what He has in store for me. He’s showering His love over me as a way of diminishing all of my brokenness. He opens His heart to me and because of it I’m learning to love and trust Him more. Since God is teaching me to surrender every aspect of my heart I’ve been able to find an unspeakable joy, experience a peace like no other, gain a small understanding of who I really am, and walk in confidence of what God is doing in me. In my act of surrender I’ve watched my heart turn from one that holds the darkest pains in my life to one that holds the most love, joy, and grace within it. God has literally changed me from the inside out because I decided to surrender it all; even the darkest parts of who I am.
There’s a whole lot God had taught me in these past few months. There are too many to count and it’s only the beginning of understanding all of what God is teaching me. I have many more lessons to learn, room to grow, and things to experience in my relationship with the Lord. One thing is for sure though, none of this can happen without surrender. Surrender has been the fuel to my burning love for the Lord. It has created space for me to gain a better understanding of who God is and who I am as well. Surrender has allowed my relationship and intimacy with the Lord flourish because without surrender there can’t be trust, love, understanding, and faith. All of these things that are needed to develop a deeper intimacy with the Lord can’t happen without having a heart of surrender. Surrender is changing the trajectory of my life. It’s giving God an invitation to have His will and His way in all aspect of my everyday life not just my big decisions. By my willingness to surrender, God is changing my words, wills, story, actions, and heart. He isn’t just changing me in little ways but He’s changing me from the inside out in order to be able to look more like Christ. Surrender is the start of something beautiful and the beginning of forever with my King.
