2 Corinthians 12:9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (RSVCE) Today's episode is about surrender to God totally. Not asking Him for help and then trying to do it all on our own, but totally surrendering it to God. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Total Surrender
2 Corinthians 12:9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (RSVCE)
“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s problems, it takes away todays peace.” Think about this for a moment. If you really think about this you know it’s true. You know worrying doesn’t change the outcome. You can worry from know until the end of time and your worry still will not change what is going to happen. I don’t say this to discourage you. There are things you can do to change what may or may not happen. You are not hopeless or helpless in these situations. Quite the opposite in fact.
You are very powerful in difficult situations because you have God on your side. It says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (RSVCE) This is God talking to St. Paul and He is talking to you too. God’s power is made perfect in your weakness. Did you know that? I am betting you didn’t. The reason that I bet you didn’t know that is because the enemy doesn’t want you to. He wants you to feel like you are in this all alone. So, if the power of God is made perfect in our weakness, why don’t we feel this power? Are you actually being weak? Are you surrendering the worry over to God? Are you asking Him for help? Or, are you trying to stay strong and do it all yourself? Are you not asking God for help because you think He is too busy, you don’t think He would help, or maybe you don’t think you deserve help? God wants to help and is ready and willing to help, and also He is waiting for you to decide if you want His help or not.
If you want to be strong and do everything on your own, God is going to give you that option. He isn’t going to force Himself on you. He gave us free will and with that comes great responsibility. God is asking us to invite Him into our lives and into our worry. He is there in our lives, just waiting for us to give Him permission to help us, waiting for us to admit that we need Him. We all need Him. Sometimes the enemy puts the idea in our head that if we need God then we are weak. There isn’t a person alive that doesn’t need God. Even Jesus, who was fully God and fully human, asked God for help.
The reason I decided to talk about this today is because I have a friend of mine that experienced a miracle on Friday and it got me thinking about how much we all want to experience miracles and yet how we all get in out own way. I am hoping that by giving you her example, as well as my own, you might be able to see how you are getting in your own way. Of course we didn’t intentionally get in our own way. We thought we were doing what we were supposed to do. We were doing all we could to save our families. Isn’t that what anyone would do? This is a perfect example of the phrase hindsight is 20/20. If we had known we were getting in the way we could have saved ourselves the heartache and surrendered sooner. Let me explain.
I was really struggling with my family. My husband and I were fighting a lot and the boys were acting out a lot. I did pray, and I asked God for help. I prayed that He would fix it, that He would give us a miracle, that He would show me what to do. Then, I read every book I could find on marriages and parenting. I listened to every podcast and searched the internet for the answer to my problems. I talked to every expert I could find. I did all I could to fix this problem in my family. Did you catch that last part? I did all I could. I asked God to fix it, and then I took the reigns back and tried to fix it on my own. Why do we do that? Why do we kill ourselves trying to solve things on our own. God is made perfect in our weakness, why don’t we let him take over?
Eventually I got tired or fighting, I got tired of doing all the research, I got tired of trying to solve it all on my own. Eventually I turned to God and said, “I give up. I can’t do this anymore. This is getting me no where. Things have to change and they have to change now. I need a break. I need you to fix this. I turn this completely over to you. I trust that you have all or our best interests in mind. You are a part of my covenant with Tony and you don’t take that lightly. You love our children more than anyone else and you want more for them than we possibly can. I surrender Lord.” If you know me and the situation, then you know I was considering a divorce. However, I told God that I didn’t want it and that I had faith in Him to either find another way, or to bring us back together later. I promised to be faithful to his Law even if I was divorced.
Do you know what? God gave me that miracle I was begging Him for. Tony and I just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary in July and although we argue as all couples do, we are so very happy. Our children are all doing well in school, doing well at home, and have all overcome some really difficult years. God is so good! I wish I could help you all to see and feel how good He really is. He loves us and wants to help us, we just need to get out of our own way.
My friend has been battling similar issues with her family for a long time now as well. She has been fighting for her daughter for a few years. She has been faithful to pray, just as I was. She has been asking God for help. And also, she has been trying to fix it herself. She has spoken to numerous specialist, counselors, and lawyers. She has done her best to love her child despite her child being awful to her. That is what we do, we fight for our children because they can’t fight for themselves. We feel as though if we aren’t fighting for them then we are giving up and how can we give up on our children? I want to argue, maybe you aren’t giving up, maybe you are handing the fight over to a more qualified candidate.
God is our Heavenly Father. Think about how much you would fight for you child. Now take that and multiply it by a thousand. That is how much God is going to fight for you, His child. The thing about handing things over to God is that He is not bound in the same way we are. He can see solutions that we would never see. He can make a way, where there is no way. In my case, I would have never in a million years imagined that in 3 years our family would go from having several crisis a day in our home to having peace in our home. Our family truly experienced a miracle and it was only after I surrendered, stopped fighting and let God take control without worrying about the outcome. I had total faith that I would be ok however, things turned out because I was not in control God was.
My friend also saw her miracle. After fighting so hard and so long, she just couldn’t do it anymore. She had exhausted her financial means, her emotional and mental energy, everything. She loves her daughter more than anything and did not want to give up on fighting for her. And also, she just could not keep putting herself at risk by continuing to fight. She finally surrendered it to God. She said she didn’t know what was going to happen in court and she listed the few outcomes that she could think of. She said unless God showed up in a huge way nothing was going to change. Guess what? God showed up in a huge way.
The judge listened to everything that everyone had to say and she came up with ideas that hadn’t even occurred to my friend. She had some great ideas, and she made things happen that my friend honestly couldn’t even picture happening anytime soon. Do you see how crazy good God is? He wants to help us. He wants to provide miracles for us. Why can’t we just surrender it to Him and get out His way and let Him work?
Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we want you to help us. We ask that you step in and show us when we are taking over. Show us how to surrender Lord. We know you can fix things better than we can. Give us the courage to surrender all of our problems to you. Help us get out of our own way Lord. Help us to step aside and let you help us. We love you Lord, you are so amazing and we are so grateful for all the ways you help us without us even knowing. Thank you for the miracles talked about here today and thank you for the millions of miracles that no one even notices. You are the best and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Today begins our fifth week of the challenge, can you believe it’s been 5 weeks already? Our focus for this week is Forgiveness. How can we be more forgiving. This one is near and dear to my heart and has been ever since I found out that God forgives us to the same extent that we forgive others. I am not sure why I didn’t know this before, as we say it every time we say the Our Father, but I still didn’t know. Now that I do know it, I want everyone else to know so that they don’t stay angry here on each just to lose that connection with the Father in Heaven. In the email that went out last night it I put an article titled The Eight Keys to Forgiveness by Robert Enright. (click here). Hopefully this article will help you develop a deeper understanding of forgiveness and some ideas of how that can happen. I look forward to spending time with you again tomorrow. Have a blessed day.