From Resistance to Surrender

“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Matthew 16:24 (ESV)

Hi, I’m Susan, and I struggle with trust and will issues. This is funny, because if you met me, you would find me to be very trusting and far more likely to empathize with you than to impose my solutions for your problems. My trust and resolve battle lies with God, not between you and me.

My self-sufficiency didn’t bring happiness, contentment, or satisfaction like I expected. Instead, it led to frustration, loneliness, disappointment, discontentment, and emptiness.

I want to say that I surrendered these issues to God, and one day I truly did. I came to a point in my life when I decided that I wasn’t able fill the emptiness that I felt by my own efforts. I chose to trust God with his plan for my life, even at the expense of losing everything I thought I needed. It was the hardest relief I ever felt.

It was hard, because the struggle to get there was real, but it was also a true release, because it was the most freeing decision I ever made. I felt like I could breathe and feel optimistic about my life again. No longer was I solely responsible for finding love, happiness, and fulfillment on my own. Now I was trusting that God knew what He was doing in my life, and He would provide what I needed to have a full and vibrant one.

I wish I could say that once I chose God’s will over mine, I calmly and confidently took every concern, difficulty, and issue to him, and fully trusted that he would provide perfectly for me. Unfortunately, I would be lying. The urge to follow my own will continues to rear its ugly head on a frequent basis. My thoughts circle frantically around in my head, searching for solutions to problems, or I find myself trying to figure out the reason behind this latest crisis. Sometimes I struggle to understand His timing, or I wonder why He isn’t on board with that I strongly feel is the best solution.

I’ve learned that surrender is an ongoing decision. I need to slow down, stop thinking, and remind myself to lay this latest obstacle down too. God already knows exactly what I need. My job is to trust Him. His job is to lead me.

Before my victorious relief, the battle was fought between my head and my heart. Maybe you can relate to it. Theoretically, I believed that God loved me, and he died for my sins. Practically, I didn’t want God to tinker with my plan for my life. I thought I knew what was best and would make me happy.

Theoretically, I believed that God could do big things with my life and use me to impact others for his glory. Practically, that was too far out of my comfort zone to give him my full surrender. I wanted consultation privileges before I trusted him with my future.

My head was all in, theoretically, but my heart had an independent spirit. It was focused on what it needed to be satiated at any given life stage, and that didn’t include a full surrender to an unknown plan with a God who I hadn’t experienced enough to fully trust. Does this make any sense to you?

Before, I was chasing who I wanted to be. After my surrender, I found who I was designed to be, and that Freed me to Flourish.

My desire is to help you find beauty in the surrender, so you can uncover His perfect plan for your life and find that you also feel Freed to Flourish.