july 15

Romans 12:1-2
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.
2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Offering yourself to God is what worship is all about.

This act of personal surrender is called many things: such as consecration, making Jesus Lord, taking up your cross, dying to self, and yielding to the Spirit.

What matters is that you do it, not what you call it. God wants your life, all of it - 95 percent is not enough.

But we won't surrender to God unless we trust him. We can't trust him until we know him better. Fear keeps us from surrendering, but love casts out all fear. The more you realize how much God loves you, the easier surrender becomes.

How do I know God loves me? He gives us many evidences:

God says he loves you (Psalm 145:9). God cares about every detail of your life (Matthew 10:30). God gave you the capacity to enjoy all kinds of pleasure (1 Timothy 6:17).

God has good plans for your life (Jeremiah 29:11). God forgives you (Psalm 86:5). God is patient with you (Psalm 145:Cool. God sacrificed his Son for you (Romans 5:Cool.

God loves you infinitely more than you can imagine.

If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ with his arms outstretched on the cross saying, "I love you this much! I'd rather die than live without you."

He is certainly worthy of our surrender.

"But we won't surrender to God unless we trust him. We can't trust him until we know him better. Fear keeps us from surrendering, but love casts out all fear. The more you realize how much God loves you, the easier surrender becomes."

Sounds a little confusing but it conveys the message that I got from this devo.
We should be a living sacrifice to God. Throughout our life, we learn and get to know God better. This is what strengthens a relationship with someone. Nothing but yourself can hold you back from getting closer to him and choosing to surrender to him. Consistently talk to God and have that healthy relationship. With your strong bond with Christ, you will have more confidence with yourself and wih God.

It's really up to us how our relationship goes...our father will always be there for us.
~Audrey~

This reminds me of Pastor Dan's sermon about the misinterpretations upon God. We may feel as if he's the distant Father, when he don't see His love expressed towards us.
Reflecting on this, it's phenomenal on how much reassurance he gives us. At the end of each day, when we recap what we've done, it's always been us that made that decision. He loves us enough that he's given us the free will to live our lives. He trusts us that we'll make the right decisions and when if don't, he's always on the other side waiting for us to make that right turn. Having His love and grace is relieving, to say the least.

In retrospect; there's never really a moment where I really surrendered to God. There was never a moment where I solidly would have said; if God gave me any command at the moment; I would follow through.

If God were to tell me something that totally goes against my beliefs and morals, there's already a problem there: I put a set of beliefs and morals above him on my set of priorities. I guess this can seek to explain that because I really don't set God above all else, I haven't ever surrendered all to him.

I think being able to surrender to God is something we should all work on as Christians, ultimately imitating what He did for us.

Calling ourselves Christians is easy and we try to live Christian lives. But the hardest thing is to surrender yourself to God. We all have our priorities and it is very difficult for us to keep God priority # 1 at all times because there are so many distractions upon us. it says that 95% of our lives is not enough to God, He wants all of our lives, and why shouldn't we give him our 100% to him? He created us and planned our lives ahead of time. Shouldn't we be willing to to give our lives to him as He is our creator. The only thing keeping us from truly surrendering our lives to him is doubt. We doubt everything and it is in our human nature to doubt.

A part that stood out to me was the part where it says offering yourself to God is what worship is all about. We all have different ways of worshiping God whether it be praising him and singing about him, or reading about him and doing devos daily, or it can be helping others in need and supporting people. Everyone has their own ways of worshiping God and all these ways are a type of worship as long as we are offering ourselves to God.

2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

So many of us are terrified of change. We're afraid of the idea that we can become better... or worse, and that we can't quite know for certain which it will be. Knowing this, we tend to fall into the habit for doing just as everyone else does.
Obviously, that's not the way to go about things.
Don't be afraid of change; welcome it.
God wants to make you better and if that takes making you worse, first, then so be it. All in all, you learn from change and you find out what's best through experimentation.
Let God change you.