Stretchings and Surrendering

We always pray to be stretched and taught to surrender daily, and then when we get in certain rough situations or have to deal with people that are difficult, we stop and say, "What are You doing God? this is hard. I don't like this. And then we think back for a minute and remember that we prayed earlier to be stretched and taught to love others the way He does. And it isn't until we find that we've surrendered to God how we are going to be able to handle something-that he brings us through it. Later, we find oursleves looking back and see that he was stretching us-which was exactly what we prayed for. I know personally I will tend to do this. I pray for growth and then when things get hard I step back, stop and complain to God about why these things are happening-it isn't until I realize that I can't handle it and give it to Him that He gives me strength and brings me out of it at some point. It is then that I can look back and see wow, God knows what He's doing.

We can't take being stretched lightly-usually when we are stretched, we are in pain, upset or hurting-we feel inadequate-in fact, we are inadequate and we have to realize that it is is only with Him that the stretching can only improve things but on our own, by our own strength, we will break.

There's something so humbling about being put in such a position where we feel so hopeless, so weak that we have nothing left but to rely on Him. And then this got me thinking, "Would if even if everything's going 'okay' we treated each day as a challenge that we can only get through if we rely fully on Him? Would if we got up every morning and surrendered ourselves, with the same passion and humility that we have when we are struggling?"

So this is my challenge to myself and to you, each morning try to recognize that you need God and that you cannot get through this day without Him no matter what circumstances you are currently in.