Surrender

Since I have received several requests to resume blogging, and seeing as how it has been almost a month since I have posted, I thought I would go ahead and add something new.
I spent the past week in Waldport, OR doing a Vacation Bible Adventure. A month prior to going, the director asked to put together a Bible Study to lead for the girls one night. I have decided to go ahead and post what I shared.

God has really been teaching me a lot about surrender this year. In his book Desiring God, John Piper says, "God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him." The Lord has really been using that phrase a lot in my life. What does it mean to be truly satisfied in God? What does this look like? What are some ways you can become satisfied in Him?
One passage God has really been using in my life is Psalm 37:3-9 "Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He will do it. he will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him; do not fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who carries out wicked schemes. Cease from anger and forsake wrath; do not fret; it leads only to evildoing. For evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD, they will inherit the land."
That word for "delight" literally means to take exquisite pleasure. Do you find God exquisite? Does He bring you more pleasure than anything else? When we truly delight in God, His desires become our desires. That verse doesn't mean that God will give us everything we want. Its meaning is much more rich and profound. I would like to share three practical truths of surrender.

1. Delighting in God means surrendering to HIS plans over your own.
Another passage of Scripture God has been teaching me is found in Psalm 73:23-28 "Nevertheless I am continually with You; You have taken hold of my right hand. With Your counsel You will guide me, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You I desire nothing on earth. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For, behold, those who are far from You will perish; You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to You. But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works."
God DOES have a plan and a specific path laid out for each and every one of us. However, God still gives us the option of choosing our plan over His. Can you think of a time you were fighting against what God was telling you to do simply because you did not want to yield your will to His? Are you unwilling to surrender something in your life now? God can't use a heart that is not fully yielded to Him. If you are unwilling to surrender certain areas of you life to God, those areas will hinder your growth and your ministy. Are you willing to place your hand into the hand of the Master and allow Him to lead you?

2. Surrendering to God's will requires faith.
Romans 4 is one of my all-time favorite passages of Scripture! This chapter talks about Abraham and how he was willing to follow God and cling to His promises even in the midst of overwhelming odds and impossible circumstances. Verses 19-21 say, "Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform."
I like the way John Piper says it: "In Hebrews 11:6 the writer says, 'Without faith it is impossible to pleas him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.' In other words, the faith that pleases God is a confidence that God will reward us when we come to Him. But surely this does not mean that we are to be motivated by material things. Surely the reward we long for is the glory of god Himself and the perfected companionship of Christ. We will sell everything to have the treasure of Christ Himself. So the faith that pleases God is the assurance that when we turn to Him, we will find the all-satisfying Treasure. We will find our heart's eternal delight. But do you see what this implies? It implies that something has happened in our hearts before the act of faith. It imples that beneath and behind the act of faith that pleases God, a new taste has been created--a taste for the glory of God and the beauty of Christ. Behonld, a joy has been born!"
Faith in God should not be based on a "get what you want" basis. I love that phrase about Christ bein the all-satisfying Treasure! I He YOUR all-satisfying Treasure? Are you willing to sell everything else in order to possess the treasure of Him?
I love the way on of my professors likes to put it: "God is not in the business of providing MapQuest directions. He will take you on step at a time."
How true that is! I don't know about you, but I am a MapQuest type of person. "Go such-and-such amount of miles and turn right. Immediate left," and so on and so forth. But God doesn't hand out detailed directions. He requires us to seek Him and then, by faith, act on what He tells us to do. Do you truly trust God? do you absolutely believe that He has a plan?
When putting faith in God's plan, it is easy to get distracted and settle for the good rather than the best. In his sermon "The Weight of Glory," C. S. Lewis says, "If there lurks in most modern minds teh notion that to desire our own good and earestly to h ope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in...and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Are you too easily pleased? Are you willing to leave behind the good things in order to pursue the best things?

3. Surrendering to God's will brings blessing.
Jeremiah 29:11-13 " 'For I know that plans that I have for you, 'declares the LORD, 'plans for your welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.' "
In my own experience, it is far too easy to equate blessing with getting what I want. In reality, God often chooses to bless me without giving me what I want. How many times in your life have you received blessing from the Lord in ways you didn't expect? Do not limit God's blessing simply to material things. Don't put Him in a box. Do you truly want God's blessing, or do you just want Him to give you what you want?

Concluding thoughts:
Are you truly surrendered to the Lord? If not, are you willing to surrender yourself?
Are you seeking to follow God or are you asking God to walk behind you and bless you as you go?
Are you pursuing God's BEST, or are settling for the good?