Today’s thought:Surrender
It’s Sunday so I was at church this morning. It wasn’t the most “supernatural” worship experience that I had in my life, but after a few songs about surrendering my life to God and giving Him my heart, I received an interesting (and important) revelation from God.
He said:
“Allow me to work in you, so I could work for you and through you.”
I understand, it sounds cliché; it might even be tempting to hit the X button on the upper right corner of your monitor right now. But give this a shot, and try reading until the end. Perhaps God also has a revelation for you after reading this post.
One of God’s most consistent promises that the Bible mentions right from the Old Testament up to the New Testament is this: Devote your life to Him and your life will go well with you.
He said it to Joshua in Joshua 1:7-8, that when he obeys God’s law to the letter, he will be successful and prosperous everywhere that he goes. And God did just that; no enemy succeeded in defeating Joshua and the Israelites in his lifetime.
The same promise was echoed by Jesus Christ himself in the New Testament several times. Matthew 6:33 and John 15:5 say the same thing: Make Jesus your top priority and God will honor your faithfulness and give you everything that you need.
Which brings me to what God told me this morning.
Allow God to work in you.
Let God take full control of your plans, dreams and desires. Let Him direct your agenda. Let Him control your emotions – every bit of love, bitterness, pain, regret, anger and frustration. Allow God to mold your character, trade your favorite sins for His grace and presence in your life. Let Him change you to the core.
How?
Begin by reading the Bible. The Bible is a powerful book – it has the power to transform you without you even knowing it. It makes you aware of the wrong things that you’ve been doing, it turns you into a better person, it gives hope, it speaks the truth, it breathes life. In fact, the Bible is more than just a book (or, literally, a collection of books) – it is where the meaning of your life depends. It is the very Word of God.
But why would I let God work in me, and in the process, surrender some things that I love doing? You might ask.
So He could work for you.
It’s the wisest trade-off that you can make in your life.
When you surrender your life to God, you can be sure that things would go well with you in the end, though it may not seem like that at the moment. When you let go of the steering wheel of your life and let Him drive, you can be sure that you’re headed to the right direction. He knows where to go.
David sang about this promise in Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. How do we delight ourselves in the Lord? Again, by talking to Him always in prayer, by reading His word and by obeying what the Bible says. Simply put, by turning away from sin.
Sin has the power to separate us from God so that He will not hear our prayers. By letting God work in us and by turning away from our sins, we unleash God’s power to bless us and work for us.
Does it mean that the Lord does not bless the sinners? Oh He still does – because of His great love and compassion. The Old Testament shows us how the Lord still blessed the nation of Israel despite their unfaithfulness. And Jesus Christ loved us and chose to die on the Cross for us even while we were still dead to our sins.
But God longs to bless you even more. He has so much in store for you; He longs to prosper you and give you a future. He has a wonderful destiny for you, which you can only receive when you give Him the freedom to work in your life: freedom to prune bad character, freedom to cut off wrong relationships, freedom to break you and mold you through the fire.
God wants us to thrive, and we can only thrive when we seek first His kingdom and righteousness.
And when we experience the full potential of God’s power and grace in our lives, the result is almost automatic:
He can finally work through us.
Yes, God wants to bless us. But that’s not the end goal. God wants to bless the nations through us, so the nations will turn to Him and worship Him as well. He wants us to be channels of His blessings!
Most Christians are blinded by the idea that Christianity is simply about going to church, attending activities and getting busy in the ministry; that when someone becomes a Christian, the next step should be to get busy in church works. That’s the reason why some Christians get easily burned out after having some bad experiences in the ministry. Hence, Christianity becomes more like a club where the activities consume your time, drain your energy and even get you frustrated at times.
They had it backwards.
Ministry is just an overflow of our personal encounter with God. Ministry is driven by love: the amount of God’s love that we experience in our lives compels us to love others and serve them. A strong relationship with God is the best foundation we can have in ministering to others.
God wants to bless others through us, but before He does that, He wants to bless us first so we can experience the full measure of His love and blessings ourselves. That can only happen when we allow Him to work in us – this is where it all begins.
Hence, allow God to work in you, so He could work for you and through you.
Introspection 