Surrender

Happy Friday, it seems like I am blogging alot on Fridays. So Since finishing my last book "Brokenness" I have picked up a new book called "How to Worship Jesus Christ" by Joseph Carroll. These two books have both spoken on how no one can truly be used fully by God unless they give everything of themselves and their life up. In this season of my life right now I am beginning to learn what it means to fully break and give everything to God.

Have you surrendered everything to God? Do you remember when you surrendered everything to God?

Have you given up your right to yourself, intellect, emotions, and your will?

I feel like I am beginning to understand what it looks like to deny myself and give up everything. I am currently working through giving up any right to myself. For me this means the right to think I know best, that my thoughts/perceptions are always right, and that I am not the godly standard. God is revealing to me the idols of self and relationships with others that I have carried with me up to this point in my life. Relationships are not meant to be where I find my purpose. Up to this point in my life I was still trying to find love in friendships and my emotions would fluctuate on how I percieved friendships to be. In the book about worship one thing that spoke to him was, if Jesus says, "All this I did for you, What have you done for me?" I think we all must expereince our knees, sacrificing everything for jesus(our dreams, perfect family, living close to parents, job, body, relationship). Why would we settle for less?

I am humbled to learn what it means to ask God for mercy, what it means to depend on him to guide every step and decision you make. I pray that God does not let me get off my knees until I am broken and fully his. That I think nothing of myself and all of him. I am nothing, when I am nothing God can use me fully.

Another thing that I have really felt God bringing to the forefront is how so many women struggle to initiate a friendship because of the fear inside of them. For myself I fear engaging with someone or calling someone because I am fearful of being rejected or hurt. I have really felt an urgency to pray for the women here in our church that the fear that keeps them from having amazing Godly relationshps with other women would not hold them captive. I have been praying freedom for myself from the fear and God has identified some specifics situations in my past where I did not feel loved and has been bringing healing to that area. As I have been praying for the women in our church an image that I saw was of women in lines as slaves working in a field and I felt like God was saying pray, cast off this fear that is holding us as slaves. Satan has no place in our hearts and paralyzing us with fear. I know that healthy relationships with women is a gift from God. In the bible there are two different kinds of friendships. One is philos-to be friendly, wish well, to associate familiarly with. The other is agapetos- which means beloved, esteemed, worthy of love. Agapetos is the meaning that many of the NT writers use when talking to a person they are sending their letter to. I pray that every women has a healthy relationship with another women and hopefully more than one, that they would be beloved friends.

Have a awesome weekend!