This summer, a group of us who live in this area (from a variety of churches) took Beth Moore’s challenge at the Living Proof Ministires blog to be in bible study. We studied the workbook Beth suggested, No Other Gods by Kelly Minter. It was an incredible time.
Some things that Kelly taught have been resonating in my mind throughout the summer and continue to now–we had our last study in this workbook on Tuesday. I want to share a couple of these things here on the blog in the days ahead.
One of the points Kelly made that really struck me is how so often we see “surrender” as a noble, godly goal. And it is. But I also see that surrender can become resignation. Almost a Christian “Eeyore” way of saying, “Well, all right…you are God and I am not.” While there is most definitely truth in this and benefit in accepting that God is God and I am not, resignation seems to focus my attention on what I am giving up, what I am leaving behind. With this focus, comes a deep and painful awareness (sometimes) of the void. There may even be a resentment that comes…ever so subtly.
However, if I move my focus from what I have relinquished to what may be yet ahead, from surrender to TRUST in the Lord, that He IS sufficient, that he will, in essence, provide the ram in the thicket when I lay my Isaac down…then there is, again, a massive change in how I perceive my act of “surrender.” Rather than the despondency and painful void resulting from giving something up, I look ahead at what God will yet do, what he will supply, provide…how he will fill that void and then some. Or like Kelly quoted from Deuteronomy (I think it is)…God brings us OUT of a land of darkness to bring us IN to His land of promise.
When I shift my focus from surrender of what I have clung to in the past to trust in Him for what will be today and tomorrow, I sense a joyful anticipation. I know that my God is faithful. In His time he WILL do something beyond all I can ask or imagine.
How true! I have a book by Henri Nouwen entitled “With Open Hands” and in there it talks about we must ‘open’ our hands to ‘let go’ of what we are ‘holding on to’ (or maybe even ‘grasping/clenching on to’) before God can ‘FILL’ them with the abundance of blessings that He has in store for us. If our hands are ‘full’ or worse, even ‘clenching onto’ things, then how can we ever receive God’s blessings. We need to release BEFORE we can be filled by God’s ‘treasures’.Thanks for sharing – a TW travellerwisegirl – Letitia