Victory Through
     Surrender
Seven Thoughts on Why
    Following God's
Will is Going to be the
  Best Choice You Have
          Ever Made   



  I have been reading The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  I was reading on the subject of surrendering yourself to God and I had to write out the seven thoughts that I have to share them with you.  You can use them as a weeks-worth of devotionals, or just read them and see what you can apply to you life

Thought One: Don't surrender to God out of fear     Surrendering to God's will for your life isn't something that you should do because your afraid what will happen if you don't.  It isn't something we do because we are Christians and that is just "what we do."  Giving up our whole life to God is what we should do because, as found in 1 John 4:19, "We love because he first loved us."
     How do we know Christ loves us?  All we have to do is look at a crucifix and listen to Christ say, "I love you this much, so much so that I would rather die than run the risk of never being with you."  That's love.

Thought Two:  Surrender makes your "yes" mean "Amen."     I don't want my words to say "I love Christ" and my actions to say, "No, Lord."  I want to give God full obedience, like Peter when he said, "Lord, we have worked all night and haven't caught a thing.  But because you say so, I will cast out the nets." (Luke 5:5) I hope to be able to say yes to God, especially when it doesn't make any sense. 

Thought Three:  Surrendering to God is hard work     In the Agony in the Garden, Christ sweat blood as he worked to follow God's plan.  Surrendering to God is not a task whose biggest rival is others in this world.  Surrendering is a spiritual and internal warfare against an enemy hard to beat - our own will.

Thought Four:  Surrendering brings peace into our lives     In Job 22:21 we find these words: "Come to terms with Him [God] and be at peace.  In this shall good come to you."  Victory over Satan and ultimate peace in our lives comes through surrendering to God's perfect plan for our lives.  Yet another paradox in our Catholic faith!

Thought Five:  Surrender allows God to use us fully     When we surrender to God's will in our lives, He is able to do unimaginable good with us.  Mary is the perfect example of this.  She said "I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to Thy word."  (Luke 1:38).  
     In the end, everyone will surrender to something, but not everyone will surrender to God.  Some will surrender to self, others to worldly things and people's opinion. 
     Humans are designed to worship.   If we fail to accept God's plan for us, we will create our own gods.
    After all, E. Stanley Jones once said: "If you don't surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos."

Thought Six:  Surrender is THE Way to live.

     Surrendering to God is not simply a choice of how we should live - it is THE way we are designed to live.  Philippians 4:13 says, "I have strength for everything through him who empowers me."   
     When we give up ourselves and recognize the insufficiency of our ways, we are able to draw strength through Christ.
      In this way, we become living sacrifices for the Lord.  Yet the problem with a living sacrifice is that it can easily get off the altar.  Thus, we have to make a constant habit of surrendering on a daily basis.

Thought Seven: Surrender because we value God over man     As Christians, we must value pleasing God over the world's popularity view.   The devil will test us and our lives will seem, in the world's eyes, inconvenient, worthless, and impossible.  Yet we must remember the words of Juvenal, a Latin poet, when he said, "Consider it the greatest of crimes to prefer survival to honor, out of love of physical life to lose the very reason for living. 

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on surrender - but now comes the ultimate question, How do you choose to surrender to God's will for your life daily? 

Comments? Suggestions?  Want to tell me how you surrender daily?  Let me know in the comments below!

God Bless you all,

Chloe M.