Surrender

I'm falling in love with so much more than me.

This is a poem I wrote called "Surrender" It's about laying down your heart for God's heart. It's about searching after the ultimate love.

When I alone plan the course before

Less grace upon my head is poured

So I give up my heart to all of you

When I seek to gain an honored place

I know that I may fall from grace

So I give up my heart to all of you

When I pray that I may find true love

I fix my eyes on things above

And I give up my heart to all of you

When I think upon my hopes and dreams

And I pray about what might be

I give up my heart to all of you

It’s in you a put my trust,

It’s in you I put my faith,

It’s in you that all my dreams come true.

You are my everlasting love

On you I set my sights upon

In you I find true love and happiness.

You are enough,

You are enough,

You are enough for me.

So I give up my heart to all of you.

     It's hard to give up your heart, but God doesn't mistreat it.  God takes our hearts, heals the damage that's been done to it. He treats it like the precious treasure that it is. Proverbs 4:23

     It hurts because he refuses to just give us a band-aid, he removes the splinter and medicates the wound.  He loves us too much to let us live with an infection. Even if, like a young child, we fight and thrash and protest against His aid. Or when tears roll down our cheeks from the pain of removal. But He saves us from infection, or perhaps a fate far worse than that. Jeremiah 33:6

     All the while, He sees us through, comforting us. He gives us hope, love and the faith to dream of more than we would have previously settle for - because we didn't know our worth, we didn't know how the father has always seen us. Romans 8:29-32

     Dream big, all the while surrendering all of yourself to all of Him. The deeper we seek after God, the more our hearts align with His-the more our desries align with His. Matthew 6:21

     When we are seeking after the things of the Lord, it is far more likely that our desires will be given to us. Psalm 37:4-6    

     And in His perfect timing, He will bring about the truest, deepest, desires of our hearts. Ephesians 3:17b-20 

     If God is "good" than He is always good - even in our lack. Psalm 107:9

Epiphany of the day!!! a.k.a God's harsh reality check for us.

An interesting thought occured to me as I struggled today - what I do daily as God works on refining me.

It all began as I sat down for breakfast. 5 minutes before class was about to begin, I was polishing off my bowl of cereal when God clearly and distinctly said, "Love Me more than you love yourself."

As you can imagine, this statement left me speechless and slightly embarrassed. Then I got to thinkin', and the following are the results of my ponderin':

(I'll put this in list in order to make concrete what was just previously abstract)

1. You don't realize how much you love yourself until God asks you to love Him more than you love yourself.

2. And in shock you will mull this over...

3. You don't realize how difficult it is to love God more than yourself, once fully understanding ALL implications of that simple request.

*Simple - Ha! FAR from...*

4. It's only then, in this state, that we realize how self-serving we are, that we realize our narcissism, our love of self...

5. And in the midst of all of these thoughts floating around, unorganized within your head, another equally stretching thought passes through:

6. That though it has been about ourselves all along, we can't--even in our vast experience of self-serving--help ourselves along this time.

7. Rather, we STILL can't. We never could. We only thought we could.

8. And then you realize that when He asks you to love Him more than you love yourself, He's also asking us to recognize our capabilities and our limitations--

9. That not even when He asks us to love Him more than ourselves are we ABLE to do so!

*Just take a break here, get some water, stick your head out the window, do whatever you need 'cause we're going back for more*

10. Upon realizing your size and insignificance, all the reasons you held (perhaps subconsciously) for serving yourself, living for your own benefit, seem microscopic, smaller than an amoeba, smaller than an atom, smaller than electron, really really really small--

11. BECAUSE--*...this is good...*BECAUSE--we can't even help ourselves to love ourselves less than we love the Father!

*Just swim to the surface now and take a breather*

Refining is so uncomfortable!

The reason why I'm so adamant about this, is because as one currently affected by the refining process, I want to make sure that I go through it as soon as possible--self-serving, I know. However, this requires of me that I lay everything down.

My mom once told me this, "The easier the silver yields to the Silversmith, the less refinement the silver has to go through, the less the Silversmith has to work at it to get it smooth to where He can see His reflection in it."

I don't know about you, but I rather give in than drag my feet through this. The harsh reality is this (for those of us followers of Christ out there): refinement is inevitable--otherwise we are incapable of truly being servants of God. Your refinement might be different from mine, but it's refinement all the same.

This is what you CAN control, you can control your attitude, the attitude that affects the decision you will make regarding the difficulty, duration and intensity of the refinement.