Surrender, pt. 2

I didn’t walk into a birthday party tonight thinking that a very-much-in-need-of-refining part of my heart would be revealed. But, as the Lord has it, that’s what happened (hence the 1:00 am blog post the night before finals begin - oops).

Through a conversation with a friend, I quickly became aware of the possessiveness that I feel the right to have over my life.

I want to hold my life with an open hand, being willing to surrender and receive whatever God intends, but that’s not always what I do.

I’ve learned that what He intends is almost always not what I intend, and I get scared to allow Him to work. I know that He isn’t making any mistakes, but I can’t see where I’m going half the time. Faith, huh. We think we’re going one way and we end up going the other. He’s tricky like that, Jesus.

But He’s not tricky (I just felt like quoting that).

He’s sovereign, and thankfully, I am not.

I wouldn’t choose for my community to drastically change in a year.

I wouldn’t choose to have my friends leave.

I wouldn’t choose the unexpected timing of most things in my life, recently and long ago.

But again… He’s sovereign and I’m not.

Thankfully I don’t have to trust myself and my own experience to get me through life. It wouldn’t get me anywhere anyway.

But waiting on Someone else to choose the timing of things is so difficult, and often painful.

To enter into the presence of a Consuming Fire, you’ve got to actually enter into it. And I think it goes without saying that fire isn’t on the top of any of our “pleasant things to enter into” list. Maybe a nice meadow or a flowing stream, but not a fire. So obviously I look for ways around it (I keep looking - there isn’t one).

To enter the presence of Fire, you must walk through it. You must trust that by doing so, this Fire is refining you. It’s taking away the things you hold dearly and control carefully. It’s purifying you. It’s making you clean and righteous.

It’s scary because you’re not in charge of what it does; it’s all around you and it’s going to burn and it sometimes feels like it’s not worth it.

There’s nothing I want to run away from more than this surrender of control, but as it usually goes, the Fire rids us of what we want to keep.

As I was praying, I was immediately answered with the conviction to tell my friend these same words. And as I typed my response, the song “I Surrender All” began to play.

All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him I freely give
I will ever love and trust Him
In His presence daily live
All to Jesus I surrender
Humbly at His feet I bow
Worldly pleasures all forsaken
Take me, Jesus, take me now I surrender all I surrender all
All to Thee, my blessed Savior
I surrender all

Okay.

*cue tears (again)*

In His presence daily live. Aka, in the fire daily live.

In a distracted moment, I thought this was kind of like the Jesus version if "Let It Go."

Only we’re not letting things go into the unknown because we can fully trust the One to Whom we’re letting those things go.