What does to be Surrendered look like for Each of Us—R Fritz
To be surrendered looks different for each person. Our relationship is different with God’s expectations different for us. God knows our shortcomings and knows what it will take for us to change into who he knows we will become. We come to Jesus as we are, we are not asked to change immediately. Repentance is what we need to do from our past sin. Matthew 16:24-27 says “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the entire world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the son of man shall come in the glory of his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” We need to be very careful who we believe in and what we are doing and who we are following in this world instead of following Jesus and his spiritual world, our eternal home.
The things we go through after we choose Jesus are the changes that cement our destiny. We might not like change, but we must trust Jesus because our life will change for the better if we trust him. It is that process that we must go through, a process that will keep us where we are physically as well as spiritually or as God brings issues to our attention, we have the chance to change the problems we did not have the knowledge to overcome or in some cases we did not know the problem existed. The Holy Spirit shines a light on the problem, we will decide either by fighting the change that is coming upon us or trusting and slowly going along with the Holy Spirit. One thing I learned was that I would not move on until I finished what the Holy Spirit wanted me to do. The Holy Spirit would ask me in a few weeks if I were ready to overcome what I must do. Sometimes I would say I am not ready to move on, it could be a month or three months when the Holy Spirit would come back and ask me if I am ready. I caught on that I would not move on to the next issue I had until I took care of the first one, that is when I forced myself to trust God and learned to overcome my fear. There was a time after that I felt like I was six feet off the ground spiritually, way out of my comfort zone. It got to a point that when the Holy Spirit showed me something that I needed to change I would say to the Holy Spirit “let us take care of it right now” and still say that.
What I also saw was people who were shown fear and to this day refused to overcome. They are still stuck where they are with their fear and that is their choice. God will not let us move on until we overcome what he puts before us. He knows what is best for us and if we do trust him, we will stay where we are. God has a plan how things need to go, but he will not force us to change. We might do things that force our hand but that is on us. Jesus did not force us to choose him and will not force us to change. It is hard for me to see what is happening to people, but I know that is their decision. Our trust makes our life complete, and we can show other people the way to a fulfilling life, a happier more content life.
Surrendered for each one of us is going to be different. If we love God, we will obey him and without question speak to the Holy Spirit explaining our issue why we cannot do what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. That is respect that should be applied to everybody and especially to God. The problem for some of us is we do not respect ourselves. We do not understand God’s love and are living on our love only. Romans 8:37-39 says “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If we have Christ Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit and if we have the Holy Spirit we have God’s love, we must ask the Holy Spirit to teach us and apply that love through him. We are trying to understand God’s love by ourselves when we just need to ask the Holy Spirit for that knowledge.
Surrender is a team sport. We cannot surrender by ourselves, the decision to surrender is made by us. The team is the Holy Spirit and us. We must give our will with the help of the Holy Spirit, it does not come all at once, we can say the words or think the words “I am surrendered” but that does not make us surrendered. Deep down in our soul issues crop up that require us to once and for all deal with things we do not know about, things hidden so deep that we did not know they exist. These could be thoughts that we believe were our thoughts, but they were lies from Satan. These were things that happened to me, so I am speaking about my experiences that I had to deal with. Our mind and soul are intricate pieces of us. Man tries to understand them but only God knows us and can fix our imperfections.
That is why we need to make that decision to surrender our will. With that decision the Holy Spirit can help to change issues that we cannot change ourselves or know exist. That will make us the person we were meant to be. The answer is when we are told “Well done good and faithful servant.” We will know we have done all we need to do. Matthew 25:23 says and this Jesus speaking about the parable of the talents. “His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of the lord.” This is what we should want Jesus to say to us. God Bless.
