God of mercy, sweet love of mine I have surrendered to your design.
May this offering stretch across the skies, these hallelujahs multiplied.
This song gets me every time I hear it. Maybe because it’s one of the many songs that keeps me both motivated and encouraged on this adventure I’m on.
Honestly I don’t know.
What I do know is surrendering to Gods design for your life isn’t always easy, but I’m learning that walking in the place of surrender is an awesome place to be in, its a place of security & a place of refuge.
As I sit and reflect on my month in India.
I’m drawn back to that word surrender.
What did surrendering look like for me….
Leaving a career I worked hard at for the last 9 years, and leaving part of my identity at a small town hospital in Pennsylvania.
It meant leaving all ‘my people’ the ones who know me, get me, & the ones who know now is not the time to talk with just one quick glance my way.
It meant giving up living alone, with a queen size bed, and a sweet cocker spaniel pup.
It meant leaving behind my church family, my mentors and my support system.
I left America, fully confident that I had surrendered it all.
India, you’ve showed me there is much more than material and worldly things to surrender.
Surrender is much more complex.
It means surrendering your feelings, your emotions and your heart. It means surrendering your pride, your fears and your past hurts. Giving it all to God, and trusting that he’s going to protect it & protect you as he promised he would. It means pushing trough the pain, the offense, the battles of the mind and handing them ALL over to God.
(and still trusting him)
I realized, my surrender was shallow. I had surrendered my ‘things’ to God, but things do not equal life. Had I fully surrendered my life and my heart to God? Was I willing to give all the hurts I compartmentalize in my heart over to God, to the one who is suppose to help heal. Do I trust God enough to surrender ? So that MY (his) hallelujahs may multiple. That’s why I’m here, right? To multiple the kingdom.
The question lurks in my heart.
Courtney where is your trust in God? Where is your trust when you choose to be offended, and build walls back up and shut people out… What are your eyes fixed on in that moment, past hurts, past insecurities. Surely your not focusing on God… Sister, what does God say about you???
God never leaves my side, he’s always right beside me willing to take the heavy load I’m carrying, it’s me, I get in the way of what could be my sweet surrender to God when I allow myself to focus more on people, more on my problems and less on God himself.
Surrender is hard. Surrender isn’t easy. Surrender hurts. Surrender is required of me.
Regardless of what my head is telling me, it’s required.
It’s required of me to grow, to continue healing and to trust more, to trust deeper.
Surrender means following Gods lead without knowing exactly where he’s sending me.
Surrender means waiting on Gods timing without knowing when ‘it’ will come.
Surrender means trusting God, trusting his purpose without understanding the circumstances.
God doesn’t call you to the World Race to keep things tucked away, compartmentalized in your hearts organized little rolodex. He calls you to the World Race to refine, sharpen, heal, to love, to be loved, and to multiple the kingdom. All these things cannot happen while holding so tightly onto past hurts, or current offenses.
Surrender your heart. All of it.
God, I’m trying.
