A whisper in my ear

     One of the things that God has been striving to teach me for several months now, is total surrender. When I say 'total surrender', I mean surrendering every difficult, painful, or emotionally trying situation into His hands and trusting Him to work it out. Over the last six or seven months, He God has given me numerous opportunities to put this into practice as stressful, chaotic, sorrowful, or humanly "impossible" situations have arisen in my life. Each time I think I am catching on and learning, He sends another test my way, and again I fail to surrender it into His hands before letting my human emotions get involved.

     In the short time that I have been on this trip, God has already been hard at work to put me through the refining fire. One of the things that He brought my way is the theft of my passport. Instead of going before His throne in prayer, I immediately began to stress and worry over the possible  outcomes of the situation.  Now, I don't know exactly why God allowed this to happen, but I  do feel like this is a test to see how I will handle it. 

     Before I fell asleep Tuesday night, I lay awake wrestling with my stress and fears until the Lord eventually filled me with peace and I knew that everything was going to be ok. The next morning I woke up, and had some time with the Lord. In the few moments I spent with Him, He pointed out passage after passage about total surrender, complete trust and the blessings that come from these. Then, later on when I was reading my Bible again, He started pointing out verse after verse about His plans and His purposes being unstoppable, as well as multiple verses about Him carrying our burdens, working out our problems, guiding us through life's troubles, being our avenger and judge, and working all things out for our good. It was so amazing for me to see how He was working to take care of this problem for me. 

      Something I have learned, is that God loves to put people in difficult, trying situations, so that He can come close and whisper into our ears, "it's alright. I Am here. I will NEVER leave you nor forsake you. Nothing you will ever face can surprise Me, for I have preordained all that will happen to you in your lifetime. No matter what you face, I am still here with you. I have this all taken care of. Trust Me, lean on Me, surrender this to Me, and I will work it all out for your good. I love you and I care about you. I Am here to carry this burden for you. All you have to do is rest in Me and leave behind all fears and worries. I will NOT let you down.  

      This is the lesson that God has been teaching me for months. I still have not arrived at complete trust nor total surrender, but this time, God finally got through to me. It was a difficult for me to surrender this to Him, but the Lord eventually succeeded in bringing me to my knees in humble submission to His will.  I still have a long way to go, but with the Lord as my strength,  I will one day have this kind of trust and will finally be able to truly surrender all to Him.

                                                      "For the glory of God!!"

              "Daily you must trust Me. Surrendering everything, 
including the breath in your lungs and the blood in your veins for Me to do with as I see fit.
 If you want to join up with Me, you must first let Me lead."

Luke 9:23, paraphrase