Fruitful Thought

  Then he said to the crowd,  “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.  – Luke 9:23 NLT Mark 8:34-35, Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.”   God wants us to surrender ALL to Him. I am currently doing a 40 Day Surrender Fast for the fourth time in two years. This study has reminded me that to surrender my will for His will daily. It has encouraged me to be intentional about a surrendered lifestyle. Every day we have a pleather of decisions to make. But one decision that we must make that trumps all other decisions we face is “Do you want to live life or just exist as the walking dead?”   Although the decision is ours to make Jesus gives us the answer in His word, Deuteronomy 30:19  - “Tod

  Now the Angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth tree, which was in Oprah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of Valor!” Judges 6:11-12 NKJV The story of Gideon is one of my favorite bible stories because I can relate to where he was, in terms of how he saw himself. Because of his experiences over the years, he had surrendered his identity. But that’s how it is for a lot of us. We have been oppressed for so long, we gave up on who we truly are, or more importantly, who God says we are. So, like with Gideon, when God comes along and tells you who you really are, it’s hard to surrender to that new way of thinking. We were so saturated with what we were exposed to, we could not see ourselves any different. Remember the 12 spies in Numbers 13:33 ? Ten came back with a bad report,

  Then Jesus said to His disciples,  “If anyone wishes to follow Me  [as My disciple],  he must deny himself  [set aside selfish interests] and take up his cross  [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come]  and follow Me  [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me]. – Matthew 16:24 AMP   I remember when I first read this scripture, it was in my 30’s and I had had enough of how I was living life.    I cried out to God ‘ There must be more to life than this’ .     I desperately wanted more out of life than what I had endured. I started my journey with Jesus with the mindset of being all in 100% no matter what. See I never do anything halfway, either I am all in or out.   I made up my mind to be all in, to give my all, to surrender myself to Jesus. As I began my journey, I started doing somethings like going to church every time the doors were open. I would listen to the sermons like I was in a

  Give your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall. Psalms 55:22 NLT Webster defines surrender as: to give up, abandon, or relinquish. So many times, we look at the word surrender from a negative perspective.   I don’t know about you, but the first thought that comes to mind is giving up something, my rights or my ability to do what I want to do or just plain giving up.   Sometimes we can get so conditioned with this mindset it can affect our walk with God. From God’s perspective surrendering our wants and desires for His, benefits us. Look at the first part of the verse. He’s asking us to surrender our burdens to Him. He knows the things that burden us can bring stress, cause issues in our relationships, and most importantly, separate us from Him. He also gives us a wonderful promise if we do. “He will take care of us, and He will not permit us to slip and fall”.   What a wonderful exchange.   The freedom of surrenderin