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This video is part one of a two-part series where I examine the term freedom in surrender. What is freedom in surrender anyway? It sounds like the words are the complete opposite, right? I actually heard this term in the lyrics of a song titled, “All I Am is Yours” by C3 Music.
What is “freedom” when you surrender to God?
When I heard that term in the lyrics, I began to think of freedom and surrender. Those sound like opposite things, but it actually made me think about what that might mean in my own personal walk with life. Over the next days and weeks, I would actually think about that and I would examine the fact that I admit and confess that I have surrendered myself and I try to hold myself in a posture of surrender to God, but it hadn’t quite occurred to me the ways that might give me freedom over many areas of my life. So in this video, I want to give you 5 ways that surrendering your life to God can actually mean freedom in your life.
Now, just to be clear, this is not to say that when we surrender to God everything will be perfect. The point I want to make in this video is that when we do surrender our lives to God, we’ll find that the five things that I’m about to discuss are far better calibrated. They’re much lower, and they’re much less intense, if not completely gone. So just keep that in mind.
#1 Freedom from fear
#1 Freedom from fear. So all of us at some point in our life have experienced some form of fear, and it may have created a level of stress or anxiety in our lives that was uncomfortable. It may have gotten in the way of moving forward, and it may just give us an overall lower feeling of good mental health.
Fear can come up in all kinds of ways. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of acceptance, fear of bad things happening, fear of the unknown, fear of the unpredictable, fear of not having control. I could go on and on and on. There are so many ways that we can experience fear living in the world these days.
When we surrender ourselves to God, what we can know is that His word says that we need not live in fear. Speaking for myself, I can say that as I’ve surrendered my life and my heart to God, the circumstances that would’ve normally created fear in me before my walk with God are lower and less. I am not going to say that I am not afraid of anything, but I will say that the scripture remains true as we put our heart and trust in God, God gives us strength. God gives us courage. He will create a sense in us that He is with us, and that allows us to feel the courage and the strength we need to enter situations that might be fearful and therefore we may feel much less fear or no fear at all.
#2 Freedom from bondage
#2, freedom from bondage. Bondage can show up in our lives in a number of ways, typically around addiction and as you know, there are all types of addictions. There’s everything from video game addiction to drug addiction to alcohol addiction and pornography addiction. We can be addicted to our ego, we can be addicted to ourselves, and we can be addicted to others.
There are all kinds of unhealthy ways that we can feel a need to find ways to quite frankly feed our flesh in circumstances that are just not helpful and not healthy and can actually be damaging not only to our mind but to our spirit. I can tell you as someone who has previously struggled with addiction, that surrendering to God has allowed me to be in a new place of recovery and not need to be relying on unhealthy ways to feed my flesh. Instead, surrender to God and surrender your heart to God and surrender your life to God.
He feeds you with His spirit and His love. Surrendering your life to God, and surrendering your struggle with addiction to God He can facilitate a path for you to move you towards recovery and a better life for yourself.
#3 Freedom from strife
#3, freedom from strife. So what does that mean? Freedom from strife. Well, first let’s talk about what does strife mean in this context?
Strife can mean chaos, it can mean disorder, it can mean conflict, it can mean confusion, it can mean chaos, it can mean any number of things. And it can be internal, it could be interrelational, it can be in family and work, relationships, and all kinds of different ways that we can have strife in our lives. Again, when we surrender our lives to God and when we surrender our hearts to God, and when we surrender the circumstances to God, He can then play a role in intervening in the circumstances that are the source of conflict. I’ve personally seen the miracle of what can happen when you ask God to intervene in a situation that brings strife into someone’s life. The way in which He responds to each one of us is going to be very different, but the bottom line is we are depending on Him to help correct and resolve the circumstances that are creating strife. Instead of relying on ourselves and relying on our own understanding, we’re trusting that God knows far more about our situation than we do. And when we surrender it to Him, He can heal, He can mend relationships, and He can put the framework in place for there to be structure, growth, healing, and reconciliation. But these things cannot just happen on our own strength alone. Surrendering to God can definitely bring it into play.
#4 Freedom from lack
#4, freedom from lack. So what do I mean by lack? That can be any number of things from having less of what you need, or not having at all what you need. That can include the fact that you don’t have enough money to pay the rent or that you don’t have money to take care of your basic living expenses. It can mean that you perhaps lack the courage to face a particular situation. It could mean that you don’t have the tools or you’re not equipped with a particular skill to accomplish a particular thing.
In all of these circumstances when we surrender to God, we surrender our life to God, and we surrender our heart to God. He can intervene and orchestrate things in such a way, first of all, to make sure that we always have what we need. We may not have what we want, but in surrendering to God, he promises to provide what we need.
And it may not be in the way that you think what you need, it may not be in the reasoning that you think it should occur or what should happen in order for things to be in order for your needs to be met. Trust me, God knows what you need way more than what you know that you need. So if we surrender to Him and ask Him to provide all of our basic needs, He is promised He will provide those things and in providing those things, we will not be in lack.
#5 Freedom from pain
#5, freedom from pain. So what do we mean by pain? Pain can mean emotional pain, it can mean physical pain, it can mean pain from loneliness. Again, we’re not suggesting in all of these areas that there will never be any pain.
We are saying that if we put our trust in God and surrender our lives to God and surrender our hearts to God, there can be healing to minimize or eliminate physical pain or emotional pain. God can touch our hearts so that if we are, for example, feeling hurt emotionally can give us the comfort that His presence can supersede the pain that we’re feeling that’s occurred due to someone else.
The pain emotionally, again, may not be completely gone. It can minimize it in a way that it is much less and it is manageable. He can show up for us in a way with our emotions so that we can endure the pain.
So those are five ways I feel that you can find freedom when you surrender your life and your heart to God.
In the next message, we look at this from a different angle. In this video, we talked about freedom and surrender. In the next video, we’re going to talk about how one can be captive when resisting God across all of those same five elements that we talked about today.
Be sure to check out all of the messages in this series:
- Freedom in Surrender – Part 1
- Freedom in Surrender – Part 2
