Good Wednesday to you!

Well, the good news about Jury duty is that I didn’t have it all week! The bad news is I have GRAND JURY! *sigh* Which means I will go for one full day, one time a month for 6 months! I have served on grand jury before so I know what I am in for but still could use your prayers as God shows me how to see His plan through being apart of it AGAIN! 🙂

Back to our study on Surrender. I pray that God was able to download to you some things that He is desiring you to surrender to HIM. Not many people commented, which in hindsight, I realize could be quite tough to do on the internet. But rest assured, that God will use your story about “ridding your stuff” to minister to someone one day. Satan likes us to keep God’s stories in the darkness. God likes to bring it into the light.

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat…WE ALL HAVE STUFF! There are things in our little red wagon’s (that we call LIFE) that we carry and lug around that God says we don’t have to. Sometimes, we are too busy to even look at what all we are toting around in our wagon’s. We just tend to glance back over our shoulders and see why in the world we feel so bogged down! We’ve accumulated more STUFF in our Wagon! (hope this makes sense!).

Sometimes things get placed in our wagon’s from our past, from other people, and even from perceived ideas or impressions – now those, are the most sneaky – they jump in there without us even knowing it!

Here is where Jesus comes in…He wants us to UNLOAD at His UNLOADING DOCK all that stuff that easily entangles us and keeps us from walking in His Kingdom with Righteousness, Peace and Joy. Once we have UNLOADED then He can load us up with HIS TRUTHS! This is our ammunition to fight the warfare from the enemy.

This is why the act of SURRENDERING is so important. It’s laying down all the stuff that keeps us from walking in the BEST that God has for us. Or better yet using us to show others Jesus in our lives. They can’t see Him if we are all a bundle of tangles with the STUFF we try to hold on to.

Ok…so I discussed in my last post on Monday that there are 4 areas of FEARS that we live in and try to hold on to.

1 – Provision -“Will I have all that I need? Will God really provide?”
2 – Pleasure – “Will I be happy?”

Now let’s look at the last two…
3 – Protection “Will I or those that I love be safe?
4 – Personal Relationships “will my personal needs be met?”

Protection: This is when we worry or fear about whether I or someone I love will be safe. Ohh! Can that get to the Mama in all of us real quick?

I know women that are absolutely a bundle full of nerves wondering if their children are safe at any given moment. Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe in providing safety for my children. I make sure they are safe with who they are with, what activities they are involved in and even what things are being taught when they are not in my presence.

I am also a little different…I have lived through a moment in my mommy-hood when I thought my husband, my 4-year-old and my 2 week old daughter’s would be without me for the rest of their lives. Jesus and I had many deep talks about this while I was down at Shands 9 years ago when I was hospitalized and almost died with Pancreatitis.

I had to put all my trust in Him that He knew what He was doing….

I had to trust that He would raise my girls up (with my husband’s help of course!) to be women of God and tell other’s about Jesus.

I had to trust Him! I had to trust Him!

So guess what I do now…..TRUST HIM!

Psalm 91:2,4-6 “This I declare about the Lord, He alone is my refuge, my place of safety, He is my God and I trust Him. He will cover you with His feathers. He will shelter you with His wings – His faithful promises are your armour and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of night nor the arrows that flies by day. Do not dread the disease that stalks in the darkness nor the disaster that strikes at Midday.”

We could spend an entire sermon series on this topic but won’t today… JUST TRUST HIM!

The last area of fears that tend to grip us is in the area of:

Personal Relationships -“Will my personal needs be met?” “Do I let relationships become my idol?”

In Hebrews 13:6, it says “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?”

Psalm 73:25 “Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on Earth. My health may fail, my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart. He is mine forever.”

Are we allowing fear to grip us when we worry about relationships in our lives?

I looked at this area several times and said, “Huh? do I deal with this Lord?” He gracefully whispered, “Yes my child, What about when you try to handle and solve ___________ (put someone’s name in the blank) problems. Are you fearful that I can not do it myself?” “Why aren’t you just surrendering them to me?”

This week I have had discussions with several friends that are struggling with worrying over family members or friends that just aren’t living the way they should. Maybe they have made the wrong choices. They are struggling with finding Jesus and walking in the awesomeness of a relationship with Him. And like my friends, I do this too, I try to teach them everything they need to know, solve their problems, carry their troubles. Meanwhile, I have put all their STUFF into my wagon.

Guess what? We are called to surrender those relationships to Jesus! In doing this, God sometimes calls us to walk in FORGIVENESS.

God downloaded some teaching since the retreat through some podcasts on forgiveness. It blew me out of the water! I’d like to share that next with you guys. I am telling you…It rocked my BOAT!

Surrender is a HUGE thing for many of us. It does not come so easy. Sometimes it is immediate and sometimes it is daily or even hourly that we go before our Heavenly Father and surrender these things in our lives at His feet. When we do surrender, it is such a freeing place! We give everything we have to Jesus to just be at his feet. What a beautiful healing place that is.

Once God gave me a vision….I was in a big green field. The sun was shining, the wind slightly blowing across my face and there were yellow flowers all around (He knows how much I LOVE wildflowers!). I was twirling around and around singing Praises to Him. A smile was on my face and joy was certainly in my heart.

I come back to this vision when He reminds me to hand Him my problems, my issues of unforgiveness, my regrets, my disobedience. Surrender is giving everything in my life to Him. It is such freedom to walk in this with Jesus. We don’t have to have such as wagon full of STUFF!

Today God wants to clean out our wagons. He wants to do some house cleaning in our hearts. What is He calling you to SURRENDER?

I want to leave you with a song I have recently been playing over and over. I heard it before this retreat I attended on Surrender – isn’t that amazing! It is beautiful to me. It mentions how we Praise Jesus when we surrender our ALL to Him.

Do yourself a favor… listen to it and hear from Jesus today!

“Highest Praise” by Kathleen Carnalli