Give it all.

"Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness." ~Blessed Mother Teresa

This past summer I learned that I'm a doer. It was week 1.1 and Laura and I were on our fun-on-one getting hot cocoa in town (it was raining and cold) and we were talking about all sorts of things but as we pulled back into camp the topic of Surrender came up. It's something Laura had struggled with, she said, because it is most often presented as something done through prayer. Laura is a doer. She wanted to have some sort of checklist to qualify the quality of her Surrender.

In the past months, I have seen how much words don't mean to me. Not by themselves. Words by themselves are nothing more than a few letters stacked together that have a dictionary meaning but are not necessarily infused with truth. It is when words get attached to actions that they may actually mean something.

For example, the word 'love' really is just four letters in a row until it is connected. There's this song called 'There is a Way" by NewWorldSon that my friend Kelsey's mom sent me a few months ago. Listen to it and you'll understand a little about how I feel about love.

My point is, without action words are just words. That includes prayer of Surrender. In the bible, Jesus asks us to give away everything we have and follow Him. Often times we read those passages and say they have a different meaning in today's context. We say that Jesus didn't actually mean give up everything but instead He was pointing to the necessity of sacrifice. That seems like a cop out. If we aren't willing to give up everything, we are retaining control of our lives and, therefore, we are not Surrendered.

No one ever said it would be easy. No one ever said it wouldn't hurt.

It's hard and it hurts. But that's why it's so worth it. I can't say that from personal experience because I have a huge issue with control but I do believe that giving one's self totally to Christ and letting Him take everything seems much better than taking it ourselves.

A friend showed me a youtube video this afternoon after small group and there was a line in it that really struck me. The video was of a skit of a girl talking to God as He gets approval to chisel away all the things on her that are not of Him. Anyway. She said "...but I've let you down..." and His response was something like, "No, you have never let me down. That's not even possible. I've always been holding you up. I hold you on my shoulders and always have--you don't hold me."