There is a topic that keeps resurfacing for me in my daily journey.  This topic is “surrender”.  I was teaching our Celebrate Recovery lesson last evening and its topic was Gratitude.  Gratitude lesson emphasizes principle 7 which tells us to “reserve a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading and prayer in order to know God and His will for my life and to gain the power to follow His will.”  I’ve never taught the Gratitude lesson until last night so my processing this lesson has always been from the receiving end.  Yesterday’s process was different.  When I am teaching I have to be sure I have the lesson’s full understanding so I pass along the author’s intent for writing the lesson.  Little did I know God had a huge purpose in this for me.  The third part of principle 7 says we can gain the power to follow God’s will.  It goes on to say that we get this power by  reserving a daily time with God for self-examination, Bible reading and prayer.

I know that when I examine myself, reflect on my day, I can easily see when I do something for selfish reasons rather than for God’s Kingdom reasons.  These selfish ones are the ones I must surrender.  However, now I am at a place in my journey to learn to surrender them ahead of acting on them.  I also know that God’s word tells me in 2 Corinthians 12:10:  “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  It is these moments of temptation to be selfish that are my weakness.  So if I am to ever complete principle 7’s learning of gaining the power to follow His will–I must surrender when I am weak so I can then be strong.

What has brought all this to head for me has been the last couple days–meeting with people who have struggles from abuse similar to mine.  These times do make me recall many old memories.  Yet, these memories are now the very ones God is using to help someone else overcome their personal battles.  For this I am most grateful–the gratitude lesson of last night.   However, when all is said and done I find myself tempted to take a moment and self-gratify as I use to when I’d pull away in “my cave” as I’ve referenced in earlier blogs.  These are my surrendering moments.  Last night’s lesson brought to head that the gratification of fulfilling God’s Kingdom work is far richer than a momentary gratification that leads to guilt.

In all this I am also learning that I can’t just surrender at the beginning of the day and expect it to hold true for the entire day.  The moments of temptation come to me when I am tired and alone.  I’m never tired in the mornings so I want to be far more awake to all of this during the day.  I want to begin the era when I can examine myself at the end of each day and sense the gratification of a day well spent completing God’s Kingdom work and surrendering the moments I am weak so I can fully find “the power to follow His will.”