Surrender it to God

As humans we like to think we are in control of our lives and our situations, and to a certain extent we are. But in many cases, especially with the biggest and most important things in our lives, there is only so much we can do.

Surrender to God

We must learn to surrender our lives and our situations to God. What does that mean? Surrendering something to God means that you have full faith in him to deliver whatever result will be best for you. It's important to note that the best result for you may not be the result you want. It may not be a success of any kind. It may be the thing you want least, but that may just be because God wants you to get something out of that experience.

Surrendering to God isn’t a free pass to slack off and not put in your work. You still need to work as hard as you can and do everything that you are able to do, but once you have done everything you can do it’s up to God to do the rest. If you don’t put in any work then you’ll fail, and you’ll fail because you need to learn how to work before you can see any success.

If things don’t turn out the way you want them to that doesn’t mean that God wasn’t there, or that God failed you. Things didn’t work out because you still have something you need to learn, or something you need to do, or something you need to change, and God doesn’t want you to move forward until you are ready.

This can be a very difficult pill to swallow. When we work so hard for something, we trust in God, and we surrender it to God, and then he doesn’t deliver the results we wanted, it can be easy to curse God and think that he has turned his back on us. In reality however, he always wants what’s best for us, and he knows far more than we do about what’s best for us. And unfortunately, failure is a much better teacher than success, and God won't shy away from you failing if he thinks you have more to gain from it in the long run.

Don’t Worry

Worrying comes from thinking about, and dwelling on, things that you have no control over. Don’t focus on the things you can’t control. When you focus on the things you can’t control, you are wasting time that you could be spending on things that you can control, and you are increasing your negative emotion which drains your energy.

You know that you are surrendering your situation to God when you find that you don’t worry about a situation. When you have done everything in your power to make things go as well as possible, and then you surrender it to God, you will have no worries. You will know in your heart that you did everything that you could, and if God wants it to work out then it will, and if God doesn’t then it won’t.

Think of really hard exams you’ve taken. I know for me there were several classes where I could study 24/7 for an exam and still not have known and understood everything that was being covered. This caused a lot of people a lot of stress and anxiety. Luckily for me I had learned at a relatively young age that worrying is counterproductive. I would study as hard as I could, or as hard as I cared to study, and when I was done, I didn’t worry, and I accepted whatever the result was.

I didn’t fully realize at the time that what I was doing was surrendering the situation to God, but that was exactly what I was doing. And I truly believe that helped me perform better in school, made me happier, and allowed me to feel more at peace because I wasn’t constantly stressing over the future.

Many people also stress and worry over their future finances. I understand that many situations are very difficult, but very little productive work comes out of being stressed and worried. Instead of worrying come up with a plan of action. Learn as much as you can about finances, or whatever hardship you are facing, and then face it to the best of your ability. Do all that you can do and trust God to deliver on the things that you can’t control.

So go out and start surrendering to God. Trust in him to deliver the results that you need the most, and pray that he gives you the strength to handle the results if they are not what you want. But don’t use surrendering to God as an excuse, you still need to put in the work. Good luck.