November 28th Devotion

Surrender the Resistance - iBelieve

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Have you ever been in a situation where you were digging in your heels and refusing to do something you just didn’t want to, but it ended up being the very thing that would change your entire life?

After I had lost my husband to cancer and gotten remarried we had an opportunity to move to another state. I had always dreamed of moving out of Utah, having adventures, and experiencing other parts of the country, but this was not what I had in mind. My stepson lived in WA and it would have been beneficial for us to move so that we could be a complete family. We were flying my stepson back and forth between Salt Lake and Seattle but it just wasn’t sustainable. It was taxing on all of us.

I knew that if we moved it would ease tension on our hearts and our bank account but I just couldn’t fathom making the decision. I worried about my grieving boys and how it would affect them to move away from family, creating another loss. My heart wasn’t ready.

But one snowy night, my husband and I were praying about what we should do and I had a moment of clarity. The Lord revealed that I had been resisting His plan, and although I didn’t understand it, I needed to obey and move. At that moment I surrendered it to God and told him I would move. In that divine moment, a massive weight lifted off of me. I couldn’t see a perfectly laid out plan of how it would all work logistically but I trusted that God would work out the details. And He did. Six months later we were settled in our new home in Washington. God had parted the red sea of the unknowns and planted us right where we needed to be. I can see now, seven years later how brilliant God’s plan was but it took me surrendering it all to see His hand and perfectly laid out plan.

It is easy to resist God’s best for us because we don’t understand the circumstances, or we can’t see clearly how things will work out. It is hard to surrender our most precious treasures and know that He will take delicate care of them. We have many examples in the Bible of God using confusing or challenging circumstances to take His people where they were supposed to be. We can see the good character of God shining in the words of scripture that prove his trustworthiness over and over.

If you are struggling with a rock and hard place circumstance, allow yourself to step out of your own ideals and perhaps glance at it from a grander perspective. Could this be the one thing that God wants to use to bring you closer to Him or to place you right where you are supposed to be?

Sometimes it is not clear. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. But if our hearts are aligned with God in all that we do and weaved into all of our life decisions we can trust that He has us cradled in His hands with only our good in mind, even if we can’t see it.

Take some time today to surrender your circumstances and allow the peace of God to reign over your fleshly feelings that can so easily steer us away. Allow God to speak to those closed-off places so that He can reveal His best plan for you. Give God all glory as you surrender and trust in our almighty God. He is trustworthy.