Tag: surrender

Save This

On October 2, 2020

Our newly remodeled four-bedroom rental unit had to be stripped to bare studs. The apartment could have appeared on the tv show hoarders. As landlords, my husband and I became leery when the tenants complained that the heat wasn’t working. We inspected the unit. The air wasn’t circulating because they had stacked things on top of the vents, and we asked them to remove some items, but they wouldn’t. A year later, the tenant below complained water was leaking into their ceiling. We sent a company to fix the issue. The plumber refused to work inside the unit, instead, they broke through the house’s exterior wall to repair the pipe. The board of health started to call, but what could we do? Legally, I couldn’t barge in and throw out items that belonged to them, our only option was to proceed with an eviction.

The tenants never even appeared in court, just up and left, abandoning the items that got them evicted in the first place. It took four overflowing 40-yard dumpsters and men decked in hazmat suits to empty the apartment down to the studs. Even the drywall had become ruined.

Some things we grip so tightly they end up gripping us.

Sometimes it’s old ideas or opinions. When my husband and I started attending church, we got involved on Sunday mornings and joined small groups that met on weeknights, but we held back our Friday evenings. Fridays, we kept for our old friends and old way of life. We’d given God six days, but He couldn’t have our Fridays. The funny thing was, we didn’t love our old ways. We merely clung to them, like a child hangs onto a worn and tattered blanket. God, however, tested us (check out last week’s blog on tests). Two months later, our closest friends in the church invited us to a small group—you guessed it—on Friday nights.

God asks for complete surrender because He knows the things of this world can choke the life out of us. What may at first appear pleasurable or intriguing can quickly become a noose around our neck. When we fully surrender to God, the things of this world lose their power. We’re no longer the hoarder suffocated by our things, buried alive by junk we idolize.

The decision to attend that Friday night small group freed my husband and me. Our old ways lost their grip, and we breathed in new life.

Put away the old person you used to be. Have nothing to do with your old sinful life. It was sinful because of being fooled into following bad desires. Let your minds and hearts be made new. You must become a new person and be God-like. Then you will be made right with God and have a true holy life. – Ephesians 4:22-24

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The Struggle is Real

By Lorri Dudley

On April 2, 2020

In Uncategorized

With my second book, The Merchant’s Yield, launching, I feel like a mother sending my young son to his first sleepover or off to his first year of college (which will happen sooner than I realize). My nerves are twisted in knots, and all I can do is pray it will be received well. You never feel so helpless than when you have to surrender up something you love.

But I couldn’t imagine a better place for it to be than in God’s hands.

Fanny Jane Crosby, the composer of the well-known hymn “Blessed assurance,” was born blind. Not only did she write over 9,000 hymns, but her life was also an example of trusting God and walking by faith. Despite the hardships of being blind, she considered her blindness a blessing:

“It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.” (Franny Crosby: America’s Hymn Queen, Christianity.com, April 2010)

Franny Crosby never started writing a hymn without praying first.

I was recently asked why God wasn’t stopping the coronavirus. Tough question. I mentioned about the earth being cursed. When sin entered the world, so did death, but then an awareness hit me. I questioned if they’d prayed to God to stop it?

At that moment, I had to check myself. Sure, I’d prayed for protection over my family and friends, but had I asked God to put an end to the virus?

James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you have not asked God.”

You better believe I’ve started asking. Can God stop the coronavirus tomorrow? Yes, He could. God’s arm is never too short. Will He stop it tomorrow? That, I don’t know, but I do know the prayers of the righteous avail much, and if we’re praying, God will be merciful.

This, too, will pass, but in the meantime, God will use it to draw His children to Him. The virus is a reminder that this is not our home. We are temporary residents—missionaries on a strange planet. Our home is in heaven, where there is no sickness, death, or disease.

I saw written on a T-shirt, “The struggle is real, but so is God,” and I couldn’t help thinking, how true. I have blessed assurance because I know God is real. He never wastes a hurt, and He certainly isn’t about to overlook this one.

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When the World Wants You to Worry

By Lorri Dudley

On August 10, 2019

In Uncategorized

Two mass shootings thirteen hours apart – this past weekend’s news headlines instills fear into the hearts of all of us.

Circumstances like El Paso and Dayton have become all too frequent. My heart breaks for those killed and injured community, and my prayers go out for their families and communities. Worrying about what is happening to this world and where things are headed makes me want to squeeze my eyes shut, crawl back under the covers, and stay there. However, I peel back the covers, and not only face each day but do so with joy and hope.

In May, my phone rang as I pulled up in front of my son’s elementary school. It was a robocall from the town. My car automatically puts my calls on speaker as a driving precaution. My son and his cousin listened in the back seat to the broadcast announcement that a possible threat had been made upon the Ashland High School and there would be a heavy police presence at all the town schools. The drop off teacher peered at me through the window and cars lined up behind me. I had only a moment to decide whether to throw the car back in drive and peel away or open the car door and let my baby out when I could tell he had fear in his eyes and a million questions for me.

I held up a one-moment finger to the drop-off teacher and prayed Isaiah 54:17over my son and nephew that no weapon turned against them would succeed. I put on my brave face and opened the car door. I told them I loved them like I do every day but added, “God has got this, and He’s got you.”

It’s hard to relinquish those that you love. I have to remind myself, that even though these precious boys are for a time in my care, they are God’s children. His love for them is greater than my own. Even if I want to protect them from every hurtful and hateful thing out there, it is God’s will, not mine. He has big plans for them, and it doesn’t entail keeping them locked away for safekeeping. As hard as it is, I have to let go and let God, and not only that, the Bible says I have to do it without worry.

Don’t worry; be praying. – Philippians 4:6 says it straight out, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” In order to allow my boys to become young men, I’ve had to stay put and let them venture from the nest, but not without prayer cover. My role has changed from Mommy guardian angel when they were little to a prayer warrior.

Don’t be a joint worrier. I will sometimes pray as if expressing my concerns is going to evoke God to worry also, enough to take action and save the day. Praying like this isn’t honoring God. It’s trying to control God. 1 Peter 5:7states, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” Cast means to throw. Not throw like a game of catch where you wait for it to be thrown back. It means to relinquish it, surrender it to God completely.

Let tomorrow worry about itself. Don’t exhaust yourself worrying over what the world is becoming, if layoffs are coming, or about your son or daughter leaving to get their driver’s license, for college, or the military. Worrying about tomorrow today only causes you to worry twice and leaves you exhausted. Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Worry is good for one thing only: to help us recognize an area of our life that we need to surrender.

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