Befriending God: A 3-Day Reading Plan on Surrenderنمونہ

As we enter our third day of exploring surrender and its role in our own spiritual formation, through the lens of Mary’s life, we see that surrender develops durability in the fragile places of our hearts and stories. Mary’s fragile heart grew to fit the size of a brave calling that would endure the tension of the world, the flesh, and the enemy. When Jesus was presented in the Temple and Simeon told Mary “a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:35), this was a telling moment. Over time God would cultivate Mary’s durability to persevere in loving, protecting, and caring for the child meant to save a world He’d spoken into being but would never fully belong in. Her heart would be pierced in the process. Mary would survive the heartache on the road back to Jerusalem only to find her missing twelve-year-old son in the Temple. Twenty-one years later she would be granted the strength to stand at a cross and watch her son bear the unbearable weight of a calling she was obedient to bring Him into the world to face. She would learn to trust God through decades of mystery as she sat in the waiting room of trust. Things wouldn’t make total sense until the Resurrection and Ascension. She would spend years living in the tension of the now and the not yet. Mary was in a long line of faithful pilgrims who knew this world was not their home and who gave their whole hearts and full sacrificial yes to follow the current of what the late great Rich Mullins referred to as “the reckless raging fury / that they call the love of God.”

If you’re reading this today and you have said yes to God, you can know with confidence that there is a great cloud of witnesses who have surrendered to the current of the force of God’s will, a will you and I sometimes find it so difficult to yield to. Take heart. There is a great cloud of witnesses who undoubtedly loved and lost big, took risks and failed, grew cynical and later recovered their faith. I thank God for followers of Jesus who choose to lose their life to find it. I thank God for those who, for the eternal joy set before them, surrender to bear their own crosses (Hebrews 12:2) because they know their reward is not in this life. Mary lost her life to discover it and, for the joy set before her, she became durable in fragile places. Sons and daughters like this have their eyes set on an eternal horizon. Hebrews 11 tells us the world is not worthy of them, the ones who have laid their best plans on the altar of costly surrender. We see the supernatural overshadow the natural through this process of trust and childlike faith, time and time again. This was Mary’s life, and the same power that flowed through the complexity of her story is available to you and me.

Prayer

God: when we, like Mary, find ourselves greatly troubled by circumstances and plans we cannot yet understand. Help us to trust Your choice of us and the invitation you extend to enter through the narrow gate of child-like faith. Help us to accept our calling into the great unknown as we pass through the valley of ruthless trust. To reach uncharted shores of destiny, to walk on the waters of the miraculous. Come Holy Spirit. Show us the way. May Your supernatural power overshadow the natural within us and through us.

If you found this reading plan helpful, you'll enjoy reading more from Tanya Godsey. Visit her and learn about Befriending God: How We Are Undone, Changed, and Made New.