This week God has really been teaching me a lot about surrender. Right now I’m reading this book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan (highly reccommend it). It’s about living big for God and having crazy love for him. It gives the analogy of a movie and those who are casted as an extra. We tend to treat our lives as this really important thing. We rent out a whole movie theater on opening night just to watch us be an extra in a movie. We’re on the screen for just seconds and think that the movie is about us. That’s like the big picture when it comes to God. I’m going to quote some parts of the book that illustrates the rest of this idea.
“We have only our two-fifths-of-a-second-long scene to live. I don’t know about you, but I want my two-fifths of a second to be about my making much of God. First Corinthians 10:31 says, “So whether youy eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” That is what each of our two-fifths of a second is about. So what does that mean for you? Frankly, you need to get over yourself. It might sound harsh, but that’s seriously what it means…To be brutally honest, it doesn’t really matter what place you find yourself in right now. Your part is to bring Him glory- whether eating a sandwhich on a lunch break, drinking coffee at 12:04 a.m so you can stay awake to study, or watching your four-month-old taka nap. The point of your life is to point to Him. Whatever you are doing, God wants to be glorified, because this whole thing is His. It is His movie, His world, His gift.”
Our purpose is to glorify God. How do we do that? Well- that’s what I’ve been learning this week. Fully glorifying God means surrendering your life and the things we tend to think we are entitled to. The reality is that God doesn’t need us. He could still bring Himself glory without us, but he choses to pursue us into intimacy with Him. How is God asking you to surrender in your life? For me, that means being here and giving myself to ministry and loving those here. To be honest it looks different from day to day.
Last week I told you about the abandoned baby girl. I went back to the hospital this week and got to see her. I sat there holding her and watching her cute smile. I forgot to write in my last blog that I had named her Nothando because that means love. This week the lady in the hospital wrote that name on her charts so that’s what she goes by now.
It may be something little like holding a baby, going on a prayer walk, sacrificing time to be with someone but I’m learning how to listen to God’s voice when he is asking me to surrender. In surrendering we let ourselves fade away and let God’s love shine in us and through us. As soon as I begun surrendering aspects of my life I began to experience more joy. More of Him and less of me.
I’ll end with a story from this week. In the hospital one of my teammates and I also went to the womens ward again. We felt led to pray for everyone. To be honest I tend to be more of a germaphob than most people so the thought of touching them while praying for them is very stretching to me. Through being obedient and laying our hands on the women with prayer we saw God work. He silenced a lady who was screaming in excruciating pain which shouldn’t surprise me but it did. Afterwards she was restfully sleeping. When we decide to surrender God uses us in big ways.
