what does surrender look like?
For as long as I can remember I’ve had some sort of plan for my life. Graduate at 17, get married at 21, become a successful business owner and quit my job so that I can start having kids by 25, retire my husband so he can be a present father, buy or build my forever home by the time I turn 30, so on and so forth.
I was heavily apart of the boss babe culture for years. “Hustle hard and build the life of your dreams,” I told myself when I was drowning. “The only way you fail is if you quit,” I said to myself in the mirror. “Prove to your family that they’re worth it,” I loudly preached over the zoom calls. I think this one especially messed me up so I can’t imagine the toll it took on the women I advised and mentored and for that I’d like to publicly apologize.
Though it may seem like it, I’m actually not here to demonize the boss babe/hustle culture, I have seen women become millionaires through hard work and dedication and, though it’s no longer included in the life I’m building, it blessed me with so many opportunities and relationships that I’m forever grateful for (not to mention it provided me with an income for years). My point in all of this is that you could say that I’ve been guilty of buying into the prosperity gospel. If I pray hard enough, dedicate enough time, work as hard as possible, and make my mission about the Lord in some way shape or form I’m bound to succeed. “Why would God withhold that success from me?” I often thought. Umm maybe because what you want doesn’t always align with His will??? I often found myself jealous of those who [seemingly] had it all — the dream house, great husband, career they loved and that supported the kind of lifestyle that builds a legacy, cute kids, and a travel budget that never runs dry — and gave the glory to God. “Why them and not me?” “Do I not work hard enough?” “Is my faith not deep enough?” Truthfully, I find these questions still haunting me.
About 6 months ago I started a bible study with some local women because I really wanted to get serious about my faith and cultivate an actual relationship with the Lord. I’ve been a Christian my entire life. I attended catholic school where we went to mass 2-3 times a week and were taught about Jesus in the classroom. My husband and I joined a church together, attended biblical premarital counseling, and were married by the church. I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t believe. That being said — everything I had learned barely scratched the surface of what I’m learning in this bible study. I’m almost 29 years old and have yet to read the bible in its entirety and it shows. In the last 6 months I’ve learned more about Jesus than the last 29 years have taught me.
My bible study group recently read James, which, as one member put it so perfectly, should only be studied after you have a spiritual foundation with God and the gospel, this is definitely not a book to start with. Nevertheless, this passage stood out to me:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring — what your life will be! For you are like vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes.
Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it. — James 4:13-17 CSB
I’m no biblical expert and I’m not here to preach anything to you or to dissect this passage and tell you exactly what it means (reference the title) because I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes I find myself struggling when I read the bible because I find myself taking passages at face value and having to really sit with them before I actually figure out what they mean but when I read this man did I find myself confused and conflicted. I thought, why put off for tomorrow what we could do today, which made sense to me, but it also read to me like I’m not supposed to plan and I’m kind of supposed to just go about life doing whatever God tells me to do. Which okay that would be great but the problem is I can’t always hear him and I have to do something in the mean time?? My bible study thought it was more of a we plan, God laughs type of passage which I can also see, but then I ask myself “why make any plans at all?” Or “what if the plans I make distract me from God’s plan?” and I know people will tell me that it’s impossible to mess up God’s plan which okay but what about free will??? Pretty sure that’s a thing. The last thing I wanna do is meet Jesus and have him ask me why I didn’t become all that he had planned for me to be. Why was I distracted by this or worried about that. Or on the flip side what if he asks me why I waited around for something to happen when I knew what to do all along (spoiler alert I don’t know)??
I went through a severely dark time in my life about a year ago and turned to the bible where I found this to be true: God doesn’t promise an amazing career, an abundance of money, your dream house, and an unlimited travel budget to all those who believe in him, if anything it’s quite the opposite. The bible often talks about suffering and hardships experienced by believers and I remember telling my husband that I have to accept that I don’t know what God has in store for me but I do know that He never promised I would have a good worldly life, He promised eternal life, and it’s hard to grasp that because when I say that it feels like I’m being a negative nancy and I’m really not trying to be because I know how good God is. And even with this knowledge, I keep trying to bend life to my will (we often do prayer requests within my bible study group and this has been something I’ve asked the group to pray over me: help me let go of my will for my life and fully embrace whatever God’s will is).
What does it look like to fully surrender to the Lord? To embrace His will at full speed? Where do I even start?
