Your Life Is Not Your Own

Yesterday my husband and I met a man from church, who will be heading up a missions trip to Haiti in just a couple of weeks, at our bank. We had to have a couple of forms notarized. One was an authorization form for our minor child to leave the country on this trip and the other was to sign over temporary guardianship to the team leader.

It felt strange to sign over temporary guardianship of my child. What it says is that for this particular period of time, I am relinquishing my rights over my child to someone else. The responsibility of his life for those six days will rest with someone else.

Mothers have a very strong attachment to their children. There is almost a sense of ownership. But the reality is that no matter who has “guardianship” over my child, he does not belong to me. He belongs to God.

As I was reflecting on these things, God reminded me of something else…my life is not my own.

…You are not your own; you were bought at a price… (I Corinthians 6:19b-20a)

How many times at church do I sing songs of surrender? “Lord, I surrender all…I surrender all…all to you my precious Savior, I surrender all.” Yet the truth is I am still holding onto things.

True surrender is a recognition that we are not our own. There was a price paid for our salvation, our new life in Christ. It was a heavy, blood-bought price. How could I expect such a price to be paid for me, yet still attempt to direct my own life?

I came to understand that for me personally, what God was trying to say is that there are some things I am still holding onto…as if I “own” them. At the top of that list are my children.

But for all of us, we have some area in our life (maybe more) that we grasp onto, too afraid to let go. We let fear and doubt prevent us from truly surrendering.

What if things don’t go the way we expected? What if something bad happens? What if it backfires? What if it doesn’t work out? We go into the idea of surrender with only “What if” thoughts. That isn’t true surrender.

The past couple of weeks this has been a real battle for me, as I saw my daughter off to her first year of high school…as the decision was made in our home about allowing our son to take this missions trip to Haiti.

I feel like my children are just growing up too fast and I want to press the pause button. But the reality is that it’s because I don’t want to relinquish them. Yet that is exactly what God is asking of us. He wants us to release EVERYTHING in our life because our life is not our own.

He paid a price for your life and soul that can never be measured. We really can’t even wrap our minds around the reality of this. It’s too divine…it’s too unbelievable.

So with that, I leave you with the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, “Unthinkable”:

That God would give His Son for me
I find it hard to believe
That a gift so great could ever be repaid
But the blood that’s flowing from His veins
Has washed away my guilty stains
Death was lost and life was gained for me

It’s unthinkable
But I still believe
It’s unthinkable
But I still believe

I’ve found forgiveness for a life of sin
You bring me healing in my brokenness
You give me purpose for a life unlived
It’s all in your blood, it’s all in your blood

Photo by mmagallan in stock.xchng

Lessons Learned at "She Speaks"

While not everyone who reads this blog attended the “She Speaks” conference held in North Carolina this past weekend, I do know that so much of what I learned could be applied to almost anyone.

In response to another attendee’s blog, I am answering four key questions that will hopefully speak to all readers.

The first question is “What was the best advice you got at She Speaks?” What spoke most to me was this, to let God determine my dream. So often we try to figure things out and decide what the best path for our lives is. We base it on our interests, our likes and those things we are skilled in.

What is interesting about God is that He often chooses to use us in ways we had never imagined or dreamed possible. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are… (I Corinthians 1:27-28)

Do you ever feel that God can’t use you because you are foolish, weak, lowly or despised? Do you feel incapable and unworthy? This is actually the best position to be in, the one that allows for God to really use you. But then you have to trust Him enough to determine your dream.

The second question is, “What was the best lesson you learned in a session?” For me it was when I participated in a peer writing critique group. You had to sit with two other women, whom I had never met, and critique each other’s article. What I learned in that is to be teachable.

The women in my group insisted on using a red pen to mark up each other’s articles. While at first I thought it was too much like being in school, I came to appreciate the red marks that were scribbled across my article. There was constructive criticism and positive remarks made.

We need to be teachable, humble enough to accept correction. Proverbs 12:1 (NIV) is pretty clear: Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. It can’t get anymore blunt than that.

However, instead of a red pen being marked across our lives, we have the blood of Christ that was poured out. His blood points us to a new life in Him and that does mean having a teachable spirit.

The third question was “What are you going to do with what you learned/what is your next goal?” Since for me I received a very favorable response from one of the book publishers, I decided to take my devotional and turn it into my Isaac. I am going to lay it down on the altar and allow God to do His thing. I have the knife over my book, poised and ready to do as He sees fit.

What is your “Isaac?” What do you need to lie down at the altar and completely surrender to God? What difficult thing must you entrust completely and wholly to the Lord?

The last question is “Anything else you want to share? (Good, bad or ugly)?" I wish I could take every single person who reads this blog back in time with me to receive all that I did. Because this past weekend wasn’t just about writing and publishing, it was about surrender.

Surrendering our dreams, our pursuits and our passions isn’t easy. We so badly want to set the course and plan the route. We have our own ideas on how things should work and what should happen next. But nothing can really move forward until we have first surrendered it to God.