Faith to surrender.

I was thinking the other day, how come we find it so hard to surrender to God? We know He is good and that He loves us more than anything. So why do we hesitate to surrender? I think on some level we know that God is good, but we don’t believe that God is good. We know we are loved but we don’t believe we are loved.

What’s the difference between knowing and believing? Mark 11:23 says, and this is Jesus speaking, “Listen to the truth I speak to you: Whoever says to this mountain with great faith and does not doubt, ‘Mountain, be lifted up and thrown into the midst of the sea,’ and believes that what he says will happen, it will be done.”

Romans 10:9 says, “And what is God’s “living message”? It is the revelation of faith for salvation, which is the message that we preach. For if you publicly declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will experience salvation.”

Faith exists in our heart which means we believe with our heart but we understand and come to know things in our mind. You can know about God and not believe in God. The above verses demonstrate to us just how powerful faith is. If by believing and speaking we can command mountains or things that appear to be unmovable to be moved out of our way, then surely using the same faith we can believe in the goodness of God and surrender ourselves wholly to God. But sometimes we just struggle to do it.

When we are struggling to surrender a certain area of our lives to God, could it be an indication that we need God’s infinite love to be revealed to us in that area so we can grow our faith and build our trust in Him? I think so. I had an experience recently where I was struggling to give something over to God. I realised then, that on some level I did not trust God with that situation. If anything, I found myself to be a bit suspicious of God.

I was thinking that if I give this situation to Him what if He does this and I hate it, or He does that and I don’t like it. I was not, in that situation, believing that God is good. That He is for me, that He wants what’s best for me. That He is more invested I my future than I am. Look at what He did when He gave us Jesus. He was thinking about my future long before I was. God cares about me deeply. He cares about you deeply. He is more invested in your future that you ever will be. My faith was limited in that area and I had to get the word of God in me for me to be able to believe God and trust Him.

So when it comes to surrender, it is not what we know that matters. It is about what we believe. It is about trusting the hands that are receiving the most precious parts of you. It is about believing that God is good, that He loves you and wants what’s best for you. It is about believing what the word says about God and what God says about you.

I will leave you with Romans 8:38-39 which says, “So now I live with the confidence that there is nothing in the universe with the power to separate us from God’s love. I’m convinced that his love will triumph over death, life’s troubles, fallen angels, or dark rulers in the heavens. There is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One.”

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.