A Prayer of Surrender

[December 6, 2015] Father, I can do nothing to make anything happen, improve anything, or make mine or anyone else’s life better in any way. I can only stand still and see Your salvation.

I therefore commit into your hands myself and everyone I care about, as well as every condition, circumstance and situation.

I will just maintain an attitude of listening and observing. If I believe You are telling me to do or not do something, I will act accordingly and not condemn myself about the outcome. I am taking my attention completely off myself and putting it on You. I will no longer assume responsibility for the welfare of any of Your children, including myself. It is a burden that I cannot bear, and one that you have not asked me to bear.

I will live in the now and not concern myself about the future, for there is no future.

I am taking my mind off everything that I am aware of through my senses and placing it on you so that you can bring to my awareness the things that are unseen, the kingdom of heaven that is within me. I am no longer going to take thought about what I eat and wear or where I have my residence or with whom I am affiliated.

April 18, 2017

I came across this today as I was looking through the folder on my computer entitled, “Unfinished Contemplations.” Then I began to look back at the 16 months since I wrote that to see what effect that prayer has had in my life since I prayed it.

It’s astounding, really. Three months after that was written, I began detaching myself from the responsibility of caring for my siblings, leaving them for the first time in nine years for an extended stay in the town nearly a thousand miles away where my husband and I had resided for over 30 years. Six months after that, we made the very difficult decision to make the move permanent. I have had multiple opportunities to live out the above statements about doing what I feel God is telling me to do without worrying or condemning myself about the outcome.

My everyday life has changed dramatically. For nine years it centered around my siblings, with whom I could share nothing about my spiritual journey because they believe me to be “deceived” and “in error.” Now I have a multitude of old friends and a few new ones who, though they certainly are not in agreement with all the revelations I believe God has given me, are yet very willing to ask me questions and hear what I have to say without becoming defensive and without condemning me for seeing things differently. We are able to make our spiritual journeys together in unity of the Spirit, if not in unity of doctrine. Many of them were in the Bible study that I taught for many years. I have begun to attend the church that I attended then and where many of them have remained. Although I no longer agree with many doctrines in the church’s “statement of faith,” I remain in sweet fellowship with the people who worship there. I know I’m in company with people who are hungry to know God and who understand that it is love, not doctrine, that “never fails.”

I know for a certainty that my siblings are also hungry to know God and that they love me even more than these people, that any one of them would take a bullet for me. All my sister’s efforts to save me from deception are a product of that love. If I believed what she does, I would be doing precisely what she is doing if I had a sister like me who was straying from those beliefs. I would be convinced that God would hold me responsible if I didn’t attempt to turn her from the error of her ways. So I cannot fault my sister for doing what she believes in her heart God is telling her to do.

Without a doubt, the most important thing that has happened during these months is the great strides I have taken toward getting free from the law and the conscience. Much of this process has been recorded in the contemplations I have written as God has revealed to me the truths I had to see to leave the law behind and begin to live my life by grace. I must confess it has been ever so much easier to hear and follow the voice of the Spirit as I have distanced myself from the voices of those who believe me to be deceived. As so many others who have lived under the law, I have been a “people pleaser,” doing whatever I thought necessary to keep those whose opinion I valued from thinking ill of me; but of course I was never able to accomplish that. I now understand that if I am to live in the peace that God gives (rather than just curtailing the anger of others), I have to follow what God is leading me to do, no matter what others feel, think or say.

I have often said that the most valuable and most difficult thing I’ve ever learned in my spiritual journey is to get quiet enough to listen to the Christ within. In a sense that is true because when I’m listening to the voices without, I’m not quiet inside. However, I think now the most difficult thing for me personally has been becoming willing to allow others to feel pain because I have chosen to follow where I believe God is leading.

The most recent incident where I’ve had to do this was when I had to say no to my sister who wanted me to come and help out when my brother had major surgery. I was willing to go and wanted to go but heard God (as well as I know how to hear God) tell me that He wanted to show her that He, not me, is the source of her supply and that she must depend upon Him alone to meet her needs. She was sure that it was my duty as a sister and a Christian to go; nothing could convince her that God would ever direct me otherwise. There was no room for discussion. I’ve never felt that much tension between me and my sister, but I still felt God’s peace through it all.

Because of my desire not to hurt family members, I have never told them about this website that I launched in 2012. I have never posted on Facebook that I have a website for fear someone would see it. I even wrote a contemplation in May, 2016, expressing the agony I went through as I attempted to become obedient to God by really going “public” with what I believe is God’s calling in my life (see “Obedience Is Better than Sacrifice”). I have just this past week contacted a friend in Ireland who designs websites for a living and asked him to help me do this. He has agreed. I don’t know what it will mean for those I love. I just know that I have to love God more and trust them, particularly my sister, into his care—knowing that He loves her far more than I do and that

Isaiah 40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

When I prayed this prayer of surrender, I couldn’t know that I was about to experience the fulfillment of this Scripture in Hebrews

Hebrews 12:6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.  7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?  8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.  9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?  10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

I’ve really avoided this Scripture because it has been so misinterpreted to mean that God tries us with pain and suffering to perfect us when James tells us clearly that that can never be the case:

James 1:13   Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

On the contrary,

James 1:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.  15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.  16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.  17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

No, God did not cause my suffering. He rather ended it by the rather painful process of “gardening”:

Matthew 15:13 . . .  Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.

John 15:2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

As the writer of Hebrews reminds us:

Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

And that “peaceable fruit” of righteousness without the law is well worth whatever pain I have endured as my Father has released me from a life lived under the law.