those who attended high school
in our small town
in the 80s or 90s
know immediately
without hesitation
who I am speaking of
when I say
“NEVER SURRENDER”
whether you were a wrestler
(I was NOT but I married one)
or were in his Health class
or shop class
Coach Billy Colburn (love you COACH!)
taught you
to
“NEVER SURRENDER”
I wish I had a nickel
for every time
I’d reflected upon
those two
simple words
and/or how many times
that battle cry
kept me going.
even today
while mowing the yard
and raking
the RELENTLESS leaves
I could him say
“NEVER SURRENDER!”
yet tonight
with those words fresh on my mind
I weigh
the question:
“When? if ever? is surrender okay?”
most recently
I’ve been reading
Kay Warren’s book
Dangerous Surrender
in it
she writes of how
the very word
“surrender”
is a dirty word to many of us
the mere mention of it
implying failure
defeat
not attractive to the many of us
who consider ourselves
so STRONG and MIGHTY
We strive to be
independent
self sufficient
adequate.
sadly
this has been me
too often
yet
by God’s grace
I am learning
to trust HIM MORE
and ME LESS.
realizing that it’s OKAY
if I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO
or DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY
and
it’s FINE if I NEED HELP
because
I KNOW!
THE
ONE
WHO KNOWS
and IS THE ANSWER
for
ALL OF THE ABOVE
I am finding
that SURRENDERING to HIM
as Kay writes
“means that we have come to the end of our independence from Him, our reliance on self-sufficiency and our insistence that we don’t need Him.”
she goes as far as to say:
“surrendering your life to God is the BOLDEST and RISKIEST step you can take. Being DANGEROUSLY SURRENDERED to God allows you to know Him in increasingly deeper ways and to participate fully
in HIS WILL.“
and THAT is
EXACTLY where
MORE THAN ELSE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
I
WANT
TO
BE.
“IN HIS WILL”
and if
Surrender
is what it takes
to get there
well……
consider me
