Hello beautiful brides, I am Adina in South Africa and today I want to share what I’ve learned in Finding the Abundant Life Chapter 10 "Surrender"
What does it mean to surrender? Surrender is the path to the abundant life and simply means to give up control of and placing our destiny in the hands of another. If we want to maintain control over any aspect of our lives, we will never experience freedom that brings peace and joy.
The first step to surrendering is to accept His plan of salvation for our lives. After that He wants to take us from glory to glory and His Holy Spirit will start to show us different areas or people that we need to surrender into His loving hands. To surrender our plans for His plan for our lives, or “Thy will be done.” It normally starts with a trail, something that overwhelms us, we do not want to do or feel like we can’t do it. It’s at that place when we feel we have to try “one more thing” or recognize that we are at a place of surrendering.
For me the most difficult trail was to give up custody of my children, it really was something I could not do and my first reaction was to fight, as I shared in my Custody Loss Novel. But I had to hit rock bottom to realize I have to surrender to the Lord’s will and plan for my life, I realized I have to let it go into His hands. Making the decision to surrender was one thing, but in the months before my children left, I went through periods that my flesh wanted to try and do something again because the pain was so bad. But every time I ran to Him and asked Him to help me to surrender my will for His and in time He gave me peace and brought me to a place of rest. And during the first year after they left, I experienced peace and joy beyond all understanding, knowing that the situation in His hands and He is working behind the scenes on His plan for my live, I just have to be still. And now, almost a year and a half later, He is changing the situation and I am moving to be in the same town as my children to share custody. But had I not surrendered the situation and laid down my will for His, if I decided to fight this battle in the flesh, things might have turned out so much worse, with me never seeing my children again.
He is asking us to surrender every area of our lives to Him, so He can take over, whether it’s our finances, a loved one’s salvation or our weight. We must take His yoke which is light and easy so we can experience the Abundant Life free of burdens weighing us down.
Dear Adina thank you for sharing and I must say your custody story was the biggest example of surrendering and you are such an encouragement to all of us.
Yes Janine, it really was the most difficult thing I had to surrender, my children, but He turned it around for good. Because my Husband gave me the story of Abraham taking his son Isaac to the altar so many times during the period before they left, I knew that I knew that I knew I had to surrender because He will use it for good.
I agree with Janine your Custody story was definitely an eye opener Adina and a perfect example of surrendering!!! Just this week I was speaking to a friend about this topic encouraging her to surrender due to some feelings that she had towards a dear friend and family member of hers and a friend of mine. Basically she felt hurt because she no longer was enjoying their close friendship so I suppose she was feeling hurt… Surrender is a principle that covers so many difficult areas, every trial, emotion, difficulty can be surrendered as we Simply Trust!!!
Yes, like the lesson says, He wants to take us from glory to glory and every trail is a opportunity to surrender and let go into His hands, whether its finances, family, friends, our weight or anything else.
This is a hard one!!! I must confess that for me it was hard!! But the fruits are blessings and blessings!!!!