Word for the week
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Our Surrender Is Our Strength
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:9-10
This past Sunday, Pastor James gave a beautiful sermon on the sufficiency of Christ’s strength for us. At the end of the sermon, Pastor James gifted us a prayer of acknowledgement and surrender to Jesus that he called the Short Breath Prayer:
Heavenly Father,
My strength is not sufficient for this.
Your strength is. I trust in you.
Amen
This short and sweet prayer (it really can be uttered in a single breath!) cuts right to the heart of prayer: “Father, I surrender to you.” This truth of surrender is so integral to the foundation of our prayers, that Jesus deemed it utterly necessary to teach us this in The Lord’s Prayer: “Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done.” (Matthew 6:10a) This is at the onset of The Lord’s Prayer and should be at the onset of our personal prayers as well.
Coupled with the call to lift high the name of our Heavenly Father (Matthew 6:9), giving the Lord’s purposes and will reverent priority over all other things in our lives (Matthew 6:10) not only shapes our heart’s attitude in coming to the Lord (v.10), but establishes a confident reminder of the Lord’s power (v.9) as we boldly come to the throne of grace.
With this attitude of surrender inscribed on our hearts, we can confidently bring our petitions to the Lord, because we are actively reflecting on the Lord’s mightiness at work in our lives. In light of God’s will, we bring greater and greater requests to the Father who generously answers with his mercy and grace that helps us in our time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
When we don’t pray in surrender, we end up in a position that I imagine many of us have experienced before: either frustration at repeatedly “unanswered” prayers, or stagnation in our prayer lives due to uninspired ritualism. This happens, because we are not engaging in prayer the way God intended it to be- a means of relationship with him. We lose our connection to God (the source of true life and inspiration) and we start living for ourselves, asking for things that God denies us, because they would only bring harm.
I encourage you to take a look at your prayer life and honestly ask if you are approaching the Father as Jesus taught. Have you acknowledged his holiness and surrendered your heart to him, the Heavenly Father who sees us coming at a distance and runs to meet us with open arms? (Luke 15) If you haven’t yet, let today be that day. Surrender now, and “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)
In Christ,
James Wood
