Happy New Year!
As I prepped to start a new year, my number one goal was to find a new devotional that would challenge me throughout the year, one that could help me start my days off grounded in the truth (I tend to be a night owl. I process information better and my thoughts run wild at night; therefore, this is when I usually study the word). Finding a solid devotional was crucial to me as I have experienced that if I do not have a dose of Truth in the morning surrounded by prayer, my entire day turns from an abundant, opportunity-filled, fresh start to further the Lord’s kingdom to a day filled with missed opportunities, forgotten grace and decisions made from a selfish heart… all leading to hurting the one’s I love unintentionally and a frustrated and unsatisfied soul.
After asking around, I decided to purchase My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers. My whole life as a believer I have known that following God means dying to ourselves; it means surrendering our (my) desires, will and life to Him and trusting Him completely with it all. I have a reminder of this tattooed on my foot for goodness sakes!
But, as I read the devotion for January 1, I paused after reading “surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably.”
2014 flew by!!!
It has only recently hit me that I am only three semesters away from graduating college, that I am only six months away from being 21 (Don’t even get me started on the finding a ‘real’ job, marriage, etc. etc. train….) and amongst all of this, I have been flooded with conviction to follow the dream(s) that the Lord has laid on my heart, no matter how impossible, big or intimidating they may seem.
This season of life seems to be flying past me, filled with one decision after another and very little time in which to make them. The Lord has recently opened by eyes – thanks to an awesome sister in Christ – to the fact that He is NOT a God of confusion, but rather He is a God of clarity and Truth. Therefore, it is not up to me to make a decision based on the options that I feel I have or the ones that this world offers me, rather these decisions are simply a matter of obedience. The Holy Spirit speaks as a still, small voice in the midst of the storms of life (1 Kings 19:12) and the decisions that are left up to us are: to listen to His voice and to follow Him (do what He has asked us to) no matter what the cost, or to ignore His call & stay inside of our comfort zone.
“surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably.”
This line hit me like a ton of bricks and changed the way I view surrender because of two, simple words: ‘absolutely’ and ‘irrevocably’.
Even in my best attempts, I don’t surrender absolutely to the Lord. For example, the areas that I said “don’t even get me started on” earlier, usually get left out; leaving me with self-inflicted heartache worrying about them.
The second word, ‘irrevocably’… once we surrender to Christ we are not meant to take it back in to our hands and attempt to carry the load on our own. That is the antithesis of the meaning of ‘surrender’…
Can you imagine what your life (what my life) would look like of you (I), surrendered absolutely and irrevocably to God?
The work that He could accomplish through you (me) if you (I) did?
“Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you go out in surrender to Him until you are not surprised an atom at anything He does?…Let the attitude of life be a continual “going out” in dependence upon God.” – Oswald Chambers- My Utmost for His Highest (January 2)
desperatelydependent 