In the game of life, we strive to be winners.  After all, we want to be on top, be recognized for our achievements and take home the trophies.  The problem is that sometimes we simply can’t win. We must choose to surrender. We have to wave the white flag and give up.

Learning to surrender each day is still one of my hardest lessons from God.  After my stroke experience, I had months of recovery time.  I had to choose every day to keep trying. I had to keep looking for reasons to take another step.  Finally, I started hearing God’s voice in a new way.  It was a gentle voice and one that offered me love and respect.  I knew that if I listened, things would get better. 

When it comes to God, there is only one winner.  When I realized that truth, I had to put up the white flag and surrender. It was more important to discover what He wanted from me so that I could simply start doing those things and obey Him.  He knew the path I needed to take and I had to be willing to walk it.

Surrender is hard enough, but really obeying what God says is even harder.  As human beings, we don’t always want to do things God’s way. We want to do them our way.  We want to do them in a way that keeps us safe and secure in our own comfort zones. 

For the past few years, I’ve worked hard to surrender my life to God.  I figure He’s a lot better equipped than I am to take care of me.  When I put up the white flag, I also pledged to obey Him as much as I possibly could.  It’s not easy and I’m still working on it, but I know that with His help, I will get better over time.  When I think back on it, I’m not sure why I wanted to get ahead of Him anyway.  He’s the commanding officer.  I’m just one of the troops.  It works better that way.

Then he took the Book of the Agreement and read it so the people could hear him. And they said, “We will do everything that the Lord has said; we will obey.” Exodus 24:6-7, NCV