If you look back to 5 or 10 years ago, has your life turned out exactly the way you thought it would? Did you have a plan for how you wanted your life to go and how you would get there?

Often there is a way we feel life should go or at least we have some idea of how we want things to turn out… and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But it’s easy to get stuck believing a very common Christian misconception, which is that “because I’m a Christian and I’m blessed… God will protect me from suffering and my life is going to exactly the way I want, when I want, because he loves me”.

Unfortunately whilst it is very true that God loves us and that we are blessed as Christians, it doesn’t mean that life will happen just the way we want it to. Very often life will not go exactly to our own plan, but despite what goes on in our lives, God can and will still work out it for good – nothing can get in the way of his plan for our lives.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

This scripture from Jeremiah clearly shows God’s intentions toward us are GOOD, He has a plan to prosper us despite what else has gone on in our lives. So are we willing to submit our own ideas of how we want our lives to go to God and trust in his plan for us?

It becomes easier to surrender to God if we truly believe that He longs to fulfil the desires of our hearts – the ones He placed in us before we could even breathe. God tenderly wove us together in our mother’s wombs and made us who we are today. He knows your heart’s desires even better than you do and yearns to gratify those longings – even more than we crave them to be fulfilled. However his ways and timing don’t always line up with ours.

So often the question we have to ask ourselves is, do we trust God enough to surrender to his plan? Are we willing to wait for God’s purpose and plans to burst forth?

Sometimes waiting is a lot easier said than done. We decide to wait…  so we wait…. and keep waiting…  But can still end up feeling like we need to take matters back into our own hands and make life happen. We get afraid of being left behind or missing out, so we start hustling, trying to go ahead of God. 

Frequently we have to choose to come back to a posture of surrender in our hearts. Delighting in God is a posture of surrender as shown in Psalm 37:4, that we can actively adopt.

“Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” Psalm 37:4 

When you stop trying to make life happen just how you want it to and are prepared to stop, pause, slow down and spend time just enjoying God, you show him that you want his plans and provision for your life. Taking time to delight in the Lord says to God, “I want what you want for me and I choose to accept your ways and timing Lord, above my own”. Sometimes it means laying down the things we think we most need or want and instead allow God to choose whether or not to give it to us. 

We can’t delight in the Lord and expect him to fulfil our hearts desires in the way we want them to be fulfilled. It is very much ‘a handing over’ of our desires to God and saying “Your way Lord!”.

The more time we spend delighting in the Lord, the more our hearts will align with his. Sometimes we realise the things we have been so energetically pursuing perhaps aren’t the best things for us after all. The more time we spend in God’s presence, the more we come alive to our true selves – who God has made us to be. We begin to wake up to the truest, deepest passions God has placed in us.

By resting in delight, you show him you are willing to surrender to his ways and timing, knowing he will do it better than we could ever hope or dream for. I suggest doing the activation below and spending some time sorting through your desires and identifying where in your life you have begun hustling instead of surrendering.

Activation

Write a list of desires/expectations/plans that you would like to surrender to God

Spend some time delighting in God and then pray through your list of plans and heart’s desires and just release them to him. Ask God to show you the steps to take for his plan for your life. Ask him to help you trust him on this journey of surrender, step by step.