But what I am learning is a life fully surrendered to Christ brings a peace and joy that you can't find through people or things.
When the lives of those around us are on fire and the walls are caving in, I see myself as this little girl with her Abba Father. The one who holds me in His hands, and I can rest my head on His shoulder and breath deep and hear His heart beating for me. When He walks me through the deep dark valley, I hesitate my childlike faith or lack of brings me to more places within my heart I need Him to work on. My stubbornness, my sassy "my way is better” as if I'm looking at the creator of the universe saying “No Dad just listen to my idea of how we should do it". ~Sigh~ maybe I'm a slow learner but He is patient and slow to anger.
My surrendered life is one within my four walls where I wash dishes daily, wipe noses and bums, where the floors get sticky and the laundry piles up. It's having a heart of obedience to live the will of my Father with a heart fully turned to Him. Even in the mundane of daily life we have trials and people will hurt us we have all felt those feeling, but it's how we respond to those hurtful things.
I have a tendancy to struggle with feeling sorry for myself when things don't go my way or get hard.
Then I read this quote:
You are not a prisoner of fear, or insecurity, or shame, because of what others did to you, by which you allowed their assessments or actions to define you, but rather because you do not forgive them their trespasses against you. And because you do not forgive them their trespasses against you, you are yet in your sins; you are still a perpetrator of evil towards others, and yourself. Your problem is not ever what others did to you, but what you do to others. It is not the circumstances that define you, but your reaction to those circumstances. When you go on in unforgiveness you have married yourself to the sin or evil committed on you, and therefore continue to reap from the same. You are no different than your perpetrators. You are one with them and carry on their work, even on yourself as the victim of your own unforgiveness.Ouch! Surrendering in the daily trials of life is looking up, keep an eternal perspective. Each of us start on a different rung on the latter as my friend says... Surrendering is choosing to forgive and love anyway.
If you do not receive your circumstances as from the hand of God, especially the evil done to you, it is God that you are not forgiving. He is the One Who sends all things your way. Yes, it sounds hard, and is hard. But it is true. HE IS GOD, and does all things.
