This series explores the freedom of surrender. Not surrender as giving up, but surrender as learning to trust the goodness of God more deeply than our need for control. Along the way, we'll discover that surrender is not losing our lives—it is finding them safely held in the hands of the One who loves us perfectly.
Open Hands (Part One)
Learning To Trust The Hands That Hold You
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding...” Proverbs 3:5
There was a time when I thought surrender meant defeat.
I imagined it as reluctantly accepting circumstances I didn't want, lowering my expectations, and trying to make peace with disappointment.
But over the years, I have come to see something very different.
There is a profound difference between surrender and quitting.
Quitting walks away from hope.
Surrender places hope into larger hands.
The Things We Were Never Meant To Carry
Much of our exhaustion comes from carrying things that were never ours to carry in the first place.
Outcomes.
Other people.
Tomorrow.
The need to make everything work out exactly as we imagined.
We grip tightly because we believe everything depends on us.
Yet the tighter we hold, the more anxious we often become.
Not because we are weak.
Because we are trying to carry a weight that belongs to God.
What The Branch Already Knows
Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.”
For years, I heard that as a warning!
Today I hear it as an invitation.
A branch does not spend its day gripping the vine, because the vine holds the branch.
Its life, nourishment, and strength flow from a connection it did not create and does not have to sustain by its own effort.
The branch rests in what the vine is continually providing.
Surrender begins there, not with trying harder to let go.
But with becoming aware of the One who is already holding on to us.
Opening Our Hands
Walking with Christ has never been about tightening our grip on life.
It is learning, little by little, that His grip on us is stronger than our grasp on Him.
Surrender is not giving up, but releasing the illusion that we were ever carrying the world alone.
And every time we open our hands, we discover that we are not letting go into emptiness.
We are entrusting ourselves to Love.
Reflection
What am I carrying that was never mine to carry?
Where am I gripping tightly because I am afraid to trust?
What would it look like to open my hands today?
Prayer