Surrender
Something that has been on my heart lately is “surrender.” This hymn has been stuck in my head for the past few days, you know the one:
““All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live.…” 💜
When I think of surrender, I think of Mary.
In case you don’t know the story, An angel tells Mary she will conceive a son and call him Jesus.
Now we might think this would be easy for Mary to accept. I mean, she will get to be the mother of Jesus!
But we forget what it must have really been like for her. It doesn’t say she was excited, it says “she was troubled at his words...”(Luke 1:29)
If you’re like me, I’m guilty of assuming that she knew from the beginning, what we know looking backwards.
But the truth of the matter was she was a young, engaged woman, who is now pregnant... not by her husband. And Joseph knew he wasn’t the father. She would have been seen as an adulterous woman. And the punishment for adultery during that time was to be stoned...and Joseph would have been looked down on for still marrying her.
Now We can look at life of Mary and know that it didn’t turn out that way for her. But she didn’t know that during the time. She had to live in the space of not knowing. This was her first experience with surrender. And her response to this process?
Incredible:
Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her...” Luke 1:38
“Let it be according to your word...”
Oh what faith. What surrender that I long to have. So this sparked my idea for this week for Spiritual discipline #3: “Surrender.” And I want to invite you this week to participate.
The challenge is to read this prayer every morning and enter your day with this mindset:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonable happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.
In Jesus name, Amen.”
And commenting below on something you need to surrender to. If you don’t want to comment, that’s fine, but please know when you comment and engage, it really motivates me to keep writing! We need a community of women who are open and vulnerable and who pray with one another. And that’s what I am trying to create here 💜
I’ll go first:
one thing I am attempting to surrender to is leaving the country. Luke and I feel so convicted to leave but it seems like God keeps placing us on hold. So I am praying for the spirit of surrender and the ability to focus on being more present in the place I have been put until the time comes that we get to leave.
Hope to hear from you below!