Front End Faith or Back End Believer – First Step: Surrender

I can do this?   I can be anything I want to be?  If I work hard enough – it will all come to me.  If it is to be – it’s up to me!  I am woman watch me roar!   I need to think about Me. 
….so how is the “I/Me” thing working out for you?

Am I surrendered to God?  

sur·ren·der
(v. sur·ren·dered, sur·ren·der·ing, sur·ren·ders v.tr.

1. To relinquish possession or control of to another because of demand or
    compulsion.

Relinquish total control of all that is me to Him? 

2. To give up in favor of another.

Give up the world in “favor” of His plans for me?

3. To give up or give back (something that has been granted)

Dedicate and give back to Him every gift (including my children) that He has
           given me?

4. To give up or abandon:

Abandon the futility of possessions, security, ego to seek Him first, love him first, and desire more than anything His will be fulfilled in me?

5. To give over or resign (oneself) to something, as to an emotion:

 Resign and commit  that today everything changes – it stops being about “me” as I am desperate for all of “Him”?

Galatians 2:20 (New American Standard Bible)       20"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Surrender – the first and most profound step to a radical spiritual breakthrough requires dying to self and living in Christ.  Surrender requires “Faith” and complete trust in what we don’t know or can’t see.  Conversely, “Faith” just can’t happen without surrender. 

Hebrews 11

Faith in Action

 1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

 3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Surrender becomes a process that claims our hearts and takes us to the abundant life that God wants for each of us. 

Isaiah 41:10'        Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'

Surrender is a place where God empowers and equips us to carry out his plans and purpose for our lives. 

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Surrender is a choice we make every day as we begin to see ourselves as God sees us. 

Isaiah 65:2 (New American Standard Bible)       I have spread out My hands all day long to a rebellious people, Who walk in the way which is not good, following their own thoughts,

Surrender humbles us and we find that we also see others differently.  Love for others is no longer a command but a response. 

Matthew 22:37-39        …Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind…And the second is…love your neighbor as yourself.

Are you at the place where you are desperately seeking more?  Are you feeling “is this all there is”?  Maybe it’s time you took the first intentional step to a radical spiritual breakthrough.   That “first step” of surrender can be so much easier if it is by “faith” and not a “fall”.