The Cost of Surrender

Over the past few months, God has been moving in our lives.  Our church had sermons on God's sovereignty.  We had been pressing into God and excited about the new ways we were experiencing Him in fresh ways.  We spent time talking about living whole heartedly for Him.  He had given us a love for His Word, more than we had ever had.  We had been ever convinced of His faithfulness and His goodness.  As I have worshiped over the past few months, I would raise my hands in surrender to Him...to His plan, to His way, to His Word.

In those times of worship, I never would have or could have imagined that we would be called to surrender our daughter into His hands.  It is easy to sing about God's faithfulness and to surrender our lives to Him when life is going well.  But, as I struggled with just yesterday, how will I respond to Him when there is a cost to my surrender?  When it means I won't be able to watch my daughter grow.  When it means, I won't be able to hear her laugh or see her smile.  When it means, she will not be a part of our family each and everyday.  When it means, I can't hold her, kiss her or tell her I love her.  How do I respond then?

Does the fact that I don't have my daughter here with me change the fact of who God is?  Like I said earlier, just months and weeks before we lost Charlotte, God had been revealing to us who He is...that He is good, He is faithful, He is sovereign, that nothing that happened in our lives didn't first pass through His hands.  In the weeks before losing Charlotte, we had even been working on memory verses with our kids.  Can you even believe that the verse we were working on was Proverbs 3:5&6?

Trust in the Lord with all of your hearts, lean not on your own understanding.  In all of your ways acknowledge Him and he will make your paths straight.  

God was working on us, because He knew the cost we would face.  He knew what the future held for us.  He knew the plans He had for us.  He knew we would be in a place when all we could do is to trust Him.  He had been working in our lives to build our faith so it would be easy to trust Him.  I think I've said in another post and I tell people all the time that if I couldn't trust God in His faithfulness even in the midst of the hurt of losing my daughter, I would have nothing to hold on to.  I would be hopeless.  That is too scary for me to even fathom.

Surrender today looks ever so different than it looked to me a month ago.  But, even as I hurt and I don't understand God's ways, I trust Him wholly.  As I shared with my small group days before we lost Charlotte, I asked them to pray that I would trust God for today...in His faithfulness, His goodness, and His love.  And today my prayer is exactly the same.  Just because my life circumstances changed, doesn't mean God has changed.  He is who He says He is.  He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow and I trust Him.