Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Surrender

Surrender or surrendering was a word I heard at nearly every church event growing up. I have gone to the altar and tearfully surrendered different things countless times. I have earnestly told God that I am surrendering certain areas and all of my life to him. After hearing tons of sermons, sunday school lessons and even a couple of college lectures on surrendering I still don't think I have grasped what it means. How do you surrender something that a portion of you doesn't want to surrender. Do you just think or pray really hard that you won't want to hold on to that area or thing anymore? I can completely mean that I hate something with the majority of who I am, but that doesn't change how the minority of me feels about it. And these questions have to do with both sinful things and things that aren't really sinful but need to be let go of too. I am starting to wonder if I have ever actually surrendered anything. If I have it would seem like I would not be struggling with the same things I struggled with in 6th grade. And when you talk to people most of the time all you get is comments like "just give it all to Jesus" or other emotional phrases that don't give me any real direction. If I say anymore on this I will just start repeating myself. There will probably be a post on prayer soon.

1 comment:

Mom said...

Daniel, I have found myself having to "re-surrender" some areas. For instance when Julia was diagnosed with Leukemia, I prayed & had to come to a place where I surrendered her to God. I had to come to a place where I finally said ok Lord she's yours and if you decide to heal her that would be great, if you decide to take her home with you, I know you'll help us through it. Was one of the hardest things I had to do. The trouble is after we surrender, sometimes yrs later, we "take back". Even though I feel O have surrendered you & Julia to God, at times I get all worried & concerned and I have to say ok God, once again I need to give them back to you. I'm sorry this is long. It is hard to explain, but sometimes as humans I think we tend to take back what we've surrendered.