Surrender
I would really like a tattoo that says “surrender”- as a reminder of my position to God. The idea is not to repeat “surrender” like a mantra, forcing myself to give up all my desires and feelings and replace them, robot like, with what I think God would want. I believe that God has intentionally given us all desires and passions for a reason- he’s given us feelings and personalities. However surrendering to God means constantly trying to view the world through God’s eyes, instead of mine. It means accepting that God is good- all the time- that He is the one Good constant in a broken world with broken people. And it does mean letting go of my WILL- but at the same time believing that God’s will is far better for me than my own.
ROMANS 12: 1-2
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
If God’s will is truly perfect, then why do I fight against it so much? Because I don’t understand it. Because I’m looking at the world as though it revolved around the role that I play in it- God is looking at it as though it revolves around Him. At my best, I have to admit that this world was moving along just as well before I was born and will continue plucking along after I am gone. God has been here since the beginning…He is I AM…
ISAIAH 55:8
8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
Surrender simply means acknowledging this verse…letting it settle into my very being. It means wrestling against the tendency to think that God should have the same thoughts as me.
The author Ann Voskamp talks very honestly about her struggle to accept God’s will and plan for life through a journey of gratitude in “One Thousand Gifts”. She found that the more she wrote down her thanks to God, even the tiniest things, the more she understood life as His gift- and the more she was able to trust in His goodness when things did not seem to be going well. I love that gratitude can be such a simple yet effective way of acknowledging that God is bigger, and that the world is better when we are less. Check out the book website One Thousand Gifts to get the book or some more inspiration on surrendering through gratitude.
Or you could just get a tattoo with me.