Full Surrender

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Vujicic, Nick. Limitless Devotions for a Ridiculously Good Life. Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2013. pp 150-152.

Opening Thought: The idea of fulling surrendering to God may be a difficult one for some people to get their heads around. Surrender sounds so much like giving up at battle. The movie line from Galaxy Quest, “never give up, never surrender”, comes to mind. Well sure if you are locked in a space battle sure but surrendering to God is much different. In the case of war, conflict, surrender will likely not benefit you, however surrendering to God always will. The reason for that is we were created to be in communion with God, led by God and to fulfill purposes God has set before us. If we are to resist that purpose, that would be like the engine in your car deciding it did like transporting people, rather it wanted to be a pool. Sure you can fill a car with water, but its not going to make a good pool.    

The devotional begins with: Exodus 15:2

The Lord if my strength and song.
And He has become my salvation;
He is my God, and I will praise Him;
My Father’s God, and I will exalt Him.

Second Thought:

I want to offer a quote for my second thought, Nick Vujicic says, “You and I may like to think we are in command of our lives, our comings and our goings, but once we commit our lives to Him, God is in command every minute of every day.” There is, in my opinion, a growing trend with Christians and secular spiritual people as well, where people are adopting a more deistic approach to their understand of God. Deism (in a nutshell) suggest that there is a creator God, but once the universe was created, God does not get involved in the creation. I feel like many of us sit in deism and don’t know it. We get so caught up with our lives and plans we forget to see and feel God working in our lives. In my teenage years I was likely a more to this thinking, but when I started to get hints of a call to ministry, I started calling out to God more in return, and what I realized was He had always been calling out to me. Since then I have experienced God in ways that I cannot explain, other than saying it must have been God working actively in my life. Now I don’t think I am anyone special to get this treatment. And sure enough, as I have talked to others, who have in their lives actively called out to God, they begin to see God working too.      

Continual Work: Cry out to God, call upon Christ to be active in your heart and life. Allow him to guide all you say and do, and His truth shall set your spirit free!

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I have felt that my experience with having a son born with a heart condition has really strengthen my faith in trusting in God. I really hope I can help other to find that steadfast reliance upon the Lord. I can think of no greater gift to share.

Scripture time: Exodus 33:14

And he said, my presence shall go with you can I will give you rest.

When you find the surrender to God, it is amazing how lighter all the burdens in life feel. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still challenging, painful and scary from time to time, but when you trust in God, when you know that God is will you, much of the agitation those feelings can cause, just sort of melts away. If you don’t feel like you have that surrender to God yet, I encourage you to seek it, as some one who has met many challenges in his young life so far, nothing prepare you to face the harshness of life like the blessing of life from God.

Closing Words: I hope you enjoyed and were lifted by this devotional time; it is truly important to take time for God each day. By doing so, you welcome God into your life, and in turn you will be able to better see the world through the eyes of God, rather than God through the world's eyes.

Artistic Close:

Surrender Poem
Author: Rev. Jacob Shaw

when I fall to Your stone my bones feel like the break

shattered moving from their earthly grave

towards the monument of the cross and I reflect

once I roared Your death, and my own - but now I bow in silence

my spirit found hollowness in my ambitions but now hallowedness in Yours 

so, I rejoice as my former bones break, yes, this pain gives me splendor

and in my descent to my knee, I now know it’s You and I

when I fall to Your stone my bones feel like the break, gladly