Subscription Lists
Surrendered to Love
by Jeannie Pallett
Are you as aware as I am of your need to change and knowing that the only place where that can happen is in the Presence of the Lord?
We come to change, we come to surrender our wills so that we are able to surrender to the greater power of the love of God and begin to love others in ways we have never done so before.
We come to change our world-wearied souls for peace that transforms us. Peace moves us to that place of quiet in our souls where we learn to trust God and we experience deep rest in God. We come to change sorrow for the joy of the Lord.
We come into His Presence sometimes feeling desperate in our need to change - we have read His Word, prayed His Word, but wait! Have we been bold enough to LIVE His Word? When I do an accounting of my life, I have to admit I do not live it well enough or often enough.
What I want, more than anything is to find my very ability to be alive is in Him. In Him - in Whose Presence is fullness of joy. To live my life in the conscious awareness of His Presence with me and to go far beyond head knowledge to that place where the depth of knowing Him is like a vast ocean before me. And I am in that Ocean held up by Him finding that He is far deeper and far more real than my highest hopes and expectations.
He tells us to "Seek His Face" and we would do so with great humility and diligence if we lived with the awareness that our faces are ever before Him. Nothing that our "faces" are trying, hoping to cover is shielded from Him. We can hide nothing in our thoughts, attitudes and behaviours from His knowing and yet His love for us is deep and true. Something we can count on and trust in.
Therefore, we come into His Presence with the intent of change and yet it is so hard when we realize that we have to work at change. It is not an automatic shifting from one way of being to another, we have to practise change and consistently choose to do and be the change.
Moreover, when it is so hard and our flesh feels like reeling against all that we know is right, pure and lovely, what must we do? What are we to do?
We enter His gates with thanksgiving in our hearts. We arrive at the gates with thanksgiving in our hearts because along the way we have chosen to move from that place of angst and begin to look for ways we can be thankful, we speak words of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving belongs to us before we enter His gates because in cultivating a thanks-giving heart we begin to see the miracles and blessings in the common of our everyday lives. Our direction and focus changes and even in the midst of turmoil we are still at the gates of the King speaking out our thanks.
We give our thanks in everything and somehow He is able to pull back the cloud and we see the silver lining, we see the unseen benefit, the positive aspect of our experience. We seek, we speak and we see the miracles!
We have come into His Presence and we have changed, day by day we are learning to let trust replace worry, words of thanksgiving take the place of our lamenting.
Praise has met us at the Courtyard gates - will we take her hand so she can usher us into the courts of the King? Joy is waiting for us; she is graced with beauty and ready to adorn us with the same.
Always, the choice remains to us. Will we take the path that teaches us thanksgiving?
Will we come to change, to surrender to Love Himself?
Rate it:
Receive the newest devotional each week in your inbox by joining the "Surrendered to Love" subscription list. Enter your email address below, click "Go!" and we will send you a confirmation email. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your addition to this list.