Surrendering is Hard

On Thursday, I was with a woman who was dying from pancreatic cancer. This woman was surrounded by her loved ones. Her husband was holding her hand, her best friend was right beside her, her brother was right in front of her.

The pain and sadness in that room was palpable to me.

This woman’s husband looked at me and said “We have only been married for three years, but she is the love of my life. I am a believer and I have hope that God has her.”

Sometimes it takes tragedies like this one for us to learn that we are really not in control of our life.

When these terrible tragedies happen it seems like a rug is pulled from under us.

We are in a culture that tells us to seize life and prosper. What happens when everything that we hold dear crumbles and falls?

Many of us have experienced tragedy or incredible suffering that force us to see the limitations of life.

It could be the sudden loss of someone we love or the sudden discovery of an incurable cancer.

Our external world is constantly changing and the things that we often depend on do not last forever.

There has to be something that we can hold on to that is deeper and more enduring. This something that we can hold onto is not something, but someone.

Each one of us is made by God and for God for Eternal Happiness. This is why deep down all of us have a desire to be happy and a deep abiding desire to live forever.

It was never God’s plan for the world to be like this. The incredible evil and suffering.

God made each one of us with the capability to freely love. God did not want to create robots, but creatures who can love without force. Freedom for God is so important.

In our freedom, we separated ourselves from God through sin.

Humanity now suffered from a really big problem. Separation from God who is the only one that can give us the happiness that we desperately crave.

God’s answer to our problem was to send Jesus into the world to save us from our sins.

In our life, we still have our freedom. With this freedom, we can choose to follow God’s plan to free us from our separation from God or not.

There is a common saying that says that in life there are two things that are inevitable “Death and Taxes.”

No matter if you are rich or poor everyone is passing through time.

Even if we sat and did absolutely nothing we are still moving through time.

We can try to hide from it and we can keep ourselves as busy as possible, but we cannot escape the passing nature of this world.

Jesus died for you and for me. He knows that life is hard because he lived our life on Earth, but he also reminds us that life is short. Our life on Earth is about traveling to Heaven.

Jesus asks us to surrender to his plans. Surrendering is not an easy thing to do.

God will not force us to do anything we don’t want to do. It is important to surrender because when we surrender we ask God to take over.

To surrender to God is to let go of our desire to control our lives and to let God take control.

No matter what happens, even when everything is crumbling, even when the rugs are pulled from under us, we have a God with a plan for us.

Surrendering to God is the smart thing to do, but it is not easy.

When we surrender to God our lives are in His hands and God will take care of us.

Let this bible verse bring you comfort in knowing God has plans for you:

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

In an upcoming post, I will write about what surrendering to God looks like practically. Pray for me and I will pray for you.