Friday, January 9, 2009

What Are You Learning?

My mom started a weekly series called "What Are You Learning?" so that we can share with each other what God is teaching us, and so I decided to participate. If you'd like to share what God is teaching you, click on the link at the end of this post.


"Jesus is...asking for an internal sacrifice and yielding." (Oswald Chambers)

Complete surrender is so difficult! Lately I've been thinking about surrender and what it means, and honestly, I've had difficulty accepting the fact that God desires, well, total surrender, not just little bits and pieces of my life.

Total surrender means stepping out of my comfort zone! It means allowing Him to point me in a direction that I may not want to go! It means letting Him get all the glory and possibly not getting any for myself!

When I look at total surrender through my limited human perspective, it sounds miserable. Yet when I look at it through the lens of God's Word and realize that He's had my life planned out to the smallest, minutest detail since before the beginning of time; and when I remember that total surrender equals true joy (if not happiness), I'm filled with a sense of peace and gratefulness. God--the Creator of a universe so complex and enormous that the most brilliant scientific minds could not possibly understand it completely--that same God stoops down and carries me through this life. He works each detail of my life into His perfect plan!

Certainly, a God like that deserves my total surrender to His will! He deserves every ounce of my life!

I recently read this excerpt from "My Utmost for His Highest" (can you tell I enjoy this book??):

It is of no value to God to give Him your life for death. He wants you to be a "living sacrifice"--to let Him have all your strengths that have been saved and sanctified through Jesus (Romans 12:1). This is what is acceptable to God.


God wants all of me. He wants the gifts He has given me to be used for His glory. He wants my very existence to direct glory to Him.

I fall so pitifully short of total surrender, but God is always patient! Thank You Father!

If you want to participate in "What Are You Learning?" just visit my mom's blog and link your post to

Tuesday, January 6, 2009


No matter what changes God has performed in you, never rely on them. Build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives. All our promises and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to accomplish them. When we come to the end of ourselves, not just mentally but completely, we are able to "receive the Holy Spirit." "Receive the Holy Spirit"--the idea is that of invasion. There is now only One who directs the course of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ.

~Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost For His Highest