I’m sassy. The thought of surrender is full of friction. Days are full of resistance with forward and backwards steps, for instance, today. My goal is to serve the Lord abroad and locally. Each day I anticipate inspiration and it comes. I’m clearing space in my home and mind so that I can travel “lighter”. I resist. Yesterday I relieved myself of 4/5 of my real estate marketing brilliant ideas. Today I’m looking at memorabilia – mine and others – and running errands. A friend, Janine, has a Cabi (Carol Anderson by Invitation) business. I usually pass but admire her entrepreneurship and ducked in today. See, we share an all too familiar recent and hard experience. I love, understand, and support her and so did my pocketbook today. I thought I would look for one thing but I found more. Then I continued on my way to Value Village to pass on some of the purge and purchase a cane for my own short-term use. Don’t ask. Somehow, in my vanity, I’ve decided that any woman sporting a cane has aged herself, at least, a decade. There were about five which I quickly narrowed to two – $6.99 and $2.99. The more affordable needed repair on some wood splinters so I purchased it to save four dollars after spending unnecessary money on another shirt. Neither experience is a hard forward or backward step but such conflicting actions based on one clear purpose.
Surrender to who? More surrender to the God of Psalm Chapter 100. Today I read a devotion by David Gilbert. It helped me simplify who my God is down to the following snippets from the text: Know that the Lord, He is God. It is He who made us. We are His. We are His people. We are the sheep of His pasture. For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever. His faithfulness to all generations.
Who does not need a God like this who created me. I am His and am safely in His pasture. He is good and He’ll love me forever. He will be faithful forever. – Now I should be able to surrender because I know who He is! Picture each day like you are on the monkey bars and, like a loving parent, He bids you leap. You don’t hesitate because you can trust a Father like this.
While I’m mulling this over during my drive home the song on the radio, addressing God says, “Surrender to your kindness”. How perfect is that. We sheep listen most of the time. God remains with His listening sheep. He was with us in the flesh for 33 years. In John 18:36-37, near the end of His time, we read, “Jesus answered, ‘My Kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting, that I might not be delivered up to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.’ Pilate therefore said to Him, ‘So You are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears My voice.” I heard God’s voice – a bit – today. The next place will be God’s kingdom without the conflicting voices that go with being in the world. I’m happy with the shirt and the cane and I know God laughs at me, often. I want to follow. He sees me so I can see others based on His truth and not my weaknesses.
