The 3 Steps of Surrender

I believe there is great power in the act of letting go and surrendering. I’m not talking about giving in or giving up and allowing the dragon to win. I’m talking about taking a step of humility in order to take a step ahead. Loosening your grip on those things you hold onto so tightly is incredibly empowering.

In fact, I believe one of the major reasons we can’t seem to move on in our lives and take that next bold step is because we don’t fully understand the power of letting go nor do we know how to fully surrender the mistakes we’ve made to Him.

Here’s the thing…surrender is always the very first step in God’s plan for your life. No matter what the problem or issue, the first step is surrender. Relationship issues? Surrender. Financial problems? Surrender. Sin issues? Surrender. Problems at work? Surrender. Control issues? Surrender. Anger issues? Surrender. Need I go on?

The crucial act of letting go, is always necessary before you’re able to move forward.

I think there are probably at least three steps you’ve got take in order to successfully surrender.

1. Face it. Whatever your “Big Mistake” was, you have to turn and face it before you can move on. So…own up to it. Stop deflecting and take the responsibility. Call it by name. Yeah, you messed up. Big time. Now before you can really heal and move on you have to admit your fault. You weren’t a victim. It was no one else’s fault. You weren’t tricked or manipulated. You made a mistake. Come clean and ask for forgiveness.
2. Come to terms. In any act of surrender there is a time where the party doing the surrendering has to agree to the terms of the surrender. What this means in this context is to ask yourself the question, “What did I learn? What did this experience teach me?” Be specific and write out a list. Remember, if it ain’t written, it ain’t real. The fact is this…if you don’t learn the lesson now, God will bring you around and put you in place to be schooled on this again. You don’t want that do you? Learn the lessons you were meant to learn this time around so you can move on.
3. Turn around. One of the best definitions of the word “repent” is to simply turn around. You were going one way, you screwed up and you made the decision to turn around and go the other way. Jesus said it simply, “Go, and sin no more.” The truth is, without this conscious decision you are doomed to repeat the failure. Without a strong decision in place we are almost always found to be too weak…we’ll fall again. You need to make the decision to turn around and do things differently from now on.

God’s first step is always surrender. If you can work through these three steps it’ll help you move forward.

Can you think of other critical steps needed in order to fully surrender?