Surrender The Fear!

Surrender The Control!

We are two weeks into the new year and already God is rattling my chain. 

I am just like every other woman pretty much. I am goal oriented as a rule a list maker.  I know most likely you are not much different.  We have so much to do and often times task driven that leads to lists that need to be made and goals pursued.

I think that’s where the “word for the year” thing came from. I thought about what my word of the year might be for 2019. My word came pretty quickly to my mind. That’s when you know God already has it in your spirit that it’s needed.  My word is “SURRENDER”.  It wasn’t difficult for me to decipher what that meant. I know myself pretty well.  I immediately processed that I needed to surrender this new season that God has me in.

My inner response was, “Ok God I got this”!  “Yes Lord I understand”. Let it go. Let it go. Que the soundtrack of “Frozen”. How wrong I was. God was going to be much more specific. 

Fast forward to where we are today. Two weeks into the new year !  I don’t necessarily wear the word “surrender” on my chest but I still know it’s there.  As I get ready for church on Sunday mornings often times I will turn on another church service to listen to.  I get notifications via YouTube when churches I follow come on live.   Relentless Church popped up that their service had begun. As I watched, the worship leaders were worshipping and giving words of encouragement.  

The Lord pricked my heart to a word they were using.  It was the word “fear”. I actually heard it a couple of times.  One of the things the worship leader said was, “where fear is tolerated, faith will be contaminated”. It stuck with me as I was getting ready so much that I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and wrote it down.  I didn’t want to forget it.

I headed on to church. Now let me say as a set up to this story,  I lead worship at my church. We practice every Wednesday night religiously.  So before I dig into the remaining part of this story, please know that I have practiced and sung these songs a bazillion times.  I know them well but as we had our Sunday morning run through, I heard words my heart hadn’t connected with before within the lyrics of the songs.

Guess what the word was? Yes, you guessed it.  It was “fear”.

I giggled to the Lord as we practiced.  The word “fear” has some significance for me.  Now mind you I am still processing the things I had heard from the church livestream as I got ready earlier….

My pastor gets up and starts teaching. A very short synopsis of what he taught is that we try to “control” our relationship with God. I never saw how that had crept in our teaching we have had most of our lives.  It’s subtle folks!  What God was trying to string together for me honestly didn’t start clicking until the end of the teaching.

What I am about to say isn’t super spiritual. Have you ever a, “well dang” moment in church?  I had one yesterday.  I hope that isn’t offensive.  You will find real relationship with God here folks.  Often times it isn’t “churched” up for you. I’m just a girl pursuing real honest relationship with Christ no matter what it looks like.  Sometimes it looks like”well dang” moments….

How sly the devil is in our approach to everything. So my next “ah hah” moment was grasping the word, “CONTROL”.

Before I go on I would just like to give God credit for knowing I need bits and pieces of growth. I can not handle the entire picture. How many of us would be really honest with each other and say that you have told God you really would like to see the big picture before hand?

Have you told Him that if you knew the plan that it would help you follow along?   A really strong revelation for me is  “nope’… I don’t need to know that.

If I knew the plan I would try to CONTROL when it happened and totally mess up God’s work and timing.

So as I sat there and these new words that had bombarded my thoughts I found God piecing together a statement that I feel He’s going to use in 2019.

Get ready folks…..

I need to SURRENDER THE FEAR.

I need to SURRENDER THE CONTROL.

I understood the word “SURRENDER” a couple of weeks ago. I thought I had it in my mind what that meant. Boy, was I wrong.

How many times has God spoken to us and we immediately thought we knew where He was headed with it?  I did. I was wrong.

He is a very specific God. He has specific things He wants me to surrender.  

They are  FEAR and CONTROL. 

Surrendering the CONTROL of where He chooses to take me

Surrendering the CONTROL of how He wants to use me. 

Surrendering the CONTROL of when He uses me.

Surrendering the FEAR of “not being educated enough”.

Surrendering the FEAR of “what those around me think”.

Surrendering the FEAR of “what if I fail”.

I would love to hear how God spoke to you through my “ah hah” moments with God.

What is God asking you to surrender?