If you read the last blog, we talked about surrender.  Hopefully, by now you are working on letting go and letting God.  But there is still more work to be done, so let’s get to it.  I remember one night after I had “let go and let God”, I was struggling with having peace and decided to listen to scripture. I opened the Holy Bible app and was led to open a reading plan that I had added more than a year prior.  It was titled “The Lord will Fight for You”.  I was reminded that “peace is the manifestation of a surrendered heart”.  I was in a place where I had believed I had surrendered my marriage and circumstances to God.  But then I began to question if I had truly and completely surrendered because I was constantly cycling between peace and unrest.  For me, surrendering meant to hold my peace and let the Lord fight my battle.  So, I had gotten good at the outward ability to surrender, the self-control part, the part where I physically removed myself from the battle and held my peace. But one night as I was in a fit of unrest after “holding my peace”,  guilt started to set in because I felt like I should have more peace.  What was I doing wrong?  And by unrest, I mean crying, not whimpering, but ugly-faced, wretched sobbing in the bathroom in the still quiet of the night.  In my mind I was like “Lord I am being still like You said, I am being quiet and letting you fight my battle like You said.  So why am I in such turmoil? ”  Then out of nowhere, BAM!  In Yo Face! Growth again.  God showed me that there was still yet something I had not surrendered.  My heart.  Surrender does require actionable demonstration such as physical and verbal restraint.  But this is only one tiny aspect of it.  It is more a matter of the heart.  Let me explain.  I had gotten really good at walking away, being silent, praying about it, giving “it” to God.  But then I would go in to my not-so “quiet” place and have a fit.  Where is the peace in that?  The only person having peace was the person I was walking away from. So, I had surrendered my circumstances, but held on to my heart.  When I tell you there is ALWAYS something new to learn about God……wow….just wow.  Don’t get me wrong, I do believe the first part of surrender is self-control because it is an act of obedience.  BUT two years into learning how to surrender, I am just now understanding that there is so much more to it than just “holding my peace”.  I am no expert; I am just sharing what I have learned from my personal experience. There is probably a lot more to surrendering on a much deeper level, but I can only share on my level of understanding.  My understanding is that another component of surrender is inward surrender.

Inward surrender (heart) – surrendering not just your circumstances, but entrusting God with your whole heart in a way that brings peace.

OUR JUNK

It seems like inward surrender should come first. But that is not the order in which I surrendered.  I think it would have made things a lot easier and maybe it would not have taken me years to learn how to hold my peace.  😊 But God chooses what, how, and when He will reveal things to us and maybe He knew I needed to learn obedience and some self-control first. So, inward surrender, for me, came after I learned how not to try doing things on my own. That is when I had to learn to trust Him with everything and believe He had my back (in this case, my heart).  I thought self-control was hard, until I had to actually trust God with my heart, my fears, my doubt, my hurt, my future, and the outcome.  I am telling you, some of y’all may think you trust God until you actually have to.  Lol. Trusting Him means once I surrender it to Him, I no longer worry about it or lose sleep.  Instead, I should have joy right?  But believe me, I have lost a lot of sleep trying to figure this part out.  I am still growing in this area.  😉 We know God is going to take care of us, right?  But if we’re honest, we just don’t want to travel a difficult journey to get to the good stuff and we don’t want to wait too long.  So why is this so scary?  Simple, most of us will do anything to avoid pain and heartache.  So we give it to God, but still sleep with one eye open worrying about what we might face.  But when we entrust our heart to God, we can rest assure He is fully aware of all of our junk, our fear, doubt, worry, past hurt, current and future pain, etc.  Yes, I said “future” pain.  And most importantly, He is and will be right by your side.

Surrendered heart – simply put, is saying “here I am Lord, I am yours and I trust your plans and whatever the outcome, I will be ok. Your will be done”.  You are saying NO MATTER the outcome, you receive it because it is God’s will. Whew Chile!  That’s not easy, is it?  It’s ok.  God knows. 😊

I do want to share more on how I progressed from outward surrender to inward surrender.  But before we get into that, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that it is important to first surrender our life by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Romans 10:9-10 say, (9) If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. If you have never confessed your sin and accepted the gift of salvation in your heart, it will be impossible to surrender your heart to God.  This is the first step to surrendering anything.

Even in salvation, according to the scripture, there is an outward component and inward component.  It says, “it is with your mouth that you profess…” (outward) and “it is with your heart that you believe…” (inward).  I praise God even as I write this for showing me how this parallels to my experience with surrender (outward and inward).  I know that my confidence should be in God, but when I write, I’ll, admit, I am not always confident that I am delivering what God wants in the way that He wants me to.  But God! God confirmed to me just now that He is pleased in my attempt to bring forth a message from him about surrendering in that we demonstrate surrender in our behavior but also in our heart as we trust Him.  Come back next time as I share more on my surrendered heart.

Remember, God loves you.  “We love because he first loved us”. 1 John 4:19.