I always assumed that when I surrendered to God that my first yes would be moving to Africa. It sounds ridiculous, but it was a literal fear of mine from a young age. “Sell everything and move to the jungle land.”
God loves us. He knows our hearts, and following Him will likely be more gentle than we may think.
My yes’s started clunky. My first intentional yes was to not watch The Bachelor so that there was room in my head to consider God. Honestly, I really didn’t want to stop. It wasn’t that the Bachelor was bad…it was God asking me to choose. I felt like God was asking me to tell Him, “Yes,” giving me the opportunity to choose to fill my mind with Him rather than the anticipation of who was going to get a rose the next week. That’s where God started with me. I obviously had a big learning curve. It’s not that I wouldn’t have been able to follow God and watch The Bachelor…but for me, God was asking me to choose, and as silly as it seems, that was a turning point.
My next yes, embarrassingly so, was the choice between God and my running shoes. Again, it seems silly, but often I had time to run, but not time to read my Bible or pray. God wasn’t telling me not to run, but He was asking me to choose Him first. So I felt like He asked me to stop running for a while, and in each of these choices, I felt my connection with God growing.
I wonder where God would start with you? I wonder what your next yes could be?
There was more to the life that I was living, and I found it in the eyes of my God, who loves us dearly but will not force our hand. He will give us the opportunity to choose Him over and over, and that choice is more likely to be running shoes than Africa. But in each little choice, it’s surrender. Saying, “Okay, God, You not me….what do You want us to do next.”
Living life surrendered to the God who created us will give us the wholeness that we are seeking, the wholeness that we will find nowhere else.
He will give us the opportunity to choose, and when He does, give Him one yes at a time. One yes after another is how we surrender, how we follow our God forever.
HLLF,
